Another Week of GW News, February 5, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years

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Another Week in the Ecological Crisis

Information Overloadis Pattern Recognition

February 5, 2012

• Chuckles, COP17, Horn of Africa, RPRP, Miller, Lenton, Europe
• WSJ-16, Intimidation, Rodentia, Subsidies, Thermodynamics, Cook
• Fukushima Note, Fukushima News
• Melting Arctic, Orca, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
• Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production
• Hurricanes, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, Attribution
• ENSO, Solar, Tipping Points, State of the Oceans, Extinctions, Satellites
• Impacts, Forests, Climate Refugees, Wacky Weather, Extreme Weather
• Wildfires, Corals, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Floods & Droughts
• Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration, Geoengineering
• Journals, Other Docs, Misc. Science, Models, Free Science, Rees, Mann, Hansen
• International Politics: Rio+20, UN, IPCC, Carbon Trade, Bank Tax, Carbon Labelling
• Hormuz, Rare Earths, EU ETS & Airlines, Solar Spat
• Law & Activism, Activism, H2O Biz, Software, Education, Predictions
• National Politics: America, BP Disaster, 2012, Keystone, ALEC
• Komen, Josh Fox, Weather Men, Obama, USAdmin, Congress
• Britain, Europe, Australia, Murray-Darling, India, China, Japan, Middle East, South America
• Canada, Post G20, Biodiversity, Caribou, Northern Gateway, Tarsands Monitor, ISA
• BC, Tar Sands, Alberta, Sask, Maritimes, North, Canadiana
• Ecological Economics, IPAT, Apocalypso, Media, Books, Video
• Energy, Fracking, Coal, Oil & Gas, Fossil Fuel Corps, Peak Oil, Biofuel
• Wind, Solar, Nukes, Nuclear Fusion, Hydrogen, Grid, Efficiency, Cars, Energy Storage
• Insurance, Joe's List, Carbon Lobby, Miscellaneous Climate, Useful Links
• Shameless Self Promotion, .sig

This week we go from the black humour zone to bizarro-land:

• 2012/02/01: JoeMohrToons: (cartoon - Mohr) It's Confirmed. We are Being Attacked by Aliens!
• 2012/02/02: uComics: (cartoon - Wiley) Happy Groundhog Day
• 2012/02/01: uComics: (cartoon - Auth) And The Winner Is...

  Looking back at COP 17 in Durban:

• 2012/02/04: PlanetJ: Durban Part 4: Conclusion
• 2012/02/03: PlanetJ: Durban Part 3: The outcome
• 2012/02/02: PlanetJ: Durban Part 2: The drama
• 2012/01/31: PlanetJ: Too late to wait on the Durban Platform, Part 1
• 2012/01/30: CCurrents: Durban: Supplications of A Dead Man's Hand

  Some tentative good news for the Horn of Africa drought and famine:

• 2012/02/03: CBC: UN declares Somalia's famine over -- Aid still needed for 2.3 million people in food crisis
• 2012/02/03: al Jazeera: UN says Somalia famine over after six months
  Rain and food deliveries end famine conditions, but food stocks could run out in May and leave millions in need of aid.
• 2012/02/03: UN: UN says Somali famine over, but warns action needed to forestall new crisis
• 2012/02/03: BBC: Famine conditions in Somalia have ended, UN says
  Famine conditions have ended in war-torn Somalia six months after being first declared, the UN has said. The improvement in access to food is due to a good harvest and significant humanitarian assistance, it said. But the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the country said the situation remained serious. Nearly a third of the population - some 2.34 million people - still need emergency support, the Somalia Food Security Nutrition Analysis Unit said. Last month, the UN said that tens of thousands of people would have died of starvation by the time the food crisis ended. Somalia has been worst hit by East Africa's worst drought in 60 years, because of its instability.
• 2012/02/02: CSM: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman urge fans to help Africa
  On January 23, DC Comics announced a new campaign to support humanitarian work in the Horn of Africa, where a confluence of drought, famine, and Islamist militia rule have led some 13 million people to starvation. The campaign, called "We Can Be Heroes," is a partnership with Time Warner and Warner Bros. and features iconic characters from DC Comics' "Justice League." These familiar faces, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg, will be broadcast widely on television, inviting viewers to go to the campaign website, where they can donate directly to aid humanitarian efforts in the Horn of Africa, or purchase goods like mugs or t-shirts whose proceeds partly (50 percent) will go to the campaign. "While many individuals may feel powerless to effect change on their own, as part of a global campaign such as this, their efforts, combined with those of other donors, can create a world of change," stated the campaign's press release last week.
• 2012/01/31: Guardian(UK): Somali Islamists ban Red Cross
• 2012/01/31: Guardian(UK): Red Cross banned from areas of Somalia under al-Shabaab control
• 2012/01/31: Guardian(UK): Somali militants shut down Red Cross food aid
• 2012/01/31: CBC: Somali militants halt Red Cross food aid
• 2012/01/30: Guardian(UK): After the famine: Somalia's refugees ponder their future
• 2012/01/30: al Jazeera: Al-Shabab bans Red Cross from Somalia
  Armed Islamist group accuses organisation of distributing outdated food and "betraying the trust" of its fighters.

The UN released their _Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing_ report this week:

• UN High Level Panel on Global Sustainability
• Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Global Sustainability
• 2012/01/30: UN:GSP: [link to 922k pdf] Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing
• 2012/02/01: TP:JR: High-Level Global Panel: Phase-Out of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Commit to Low-Carbon Energy
• 2012/01/31: WiC: World lacks enough food, fuel as population soars: U.N.
• 2012/01/30: Reuters: World lacks enough food, fuel as population soars: U.N.
  The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday.
• 2012/01/30: Guardian(UK): Put planet and its people at the core of sustainable development, urges report
• 2012/01/31: EnergyBulletin: Resilient people, resilient planet: a future worth choosing by the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability
• 2012/01/31: ABC(Au): UN paints bleak picture of sustainability
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: By 2050 We're All Likely To Be Using Fewer Resources, Whether We Like It Or Not
• 2012/01/30: UN: With new blueprint [Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing] in hand, Ban calls for action to chart more sustainable future
• 2012/01/31: ABC(Au): World running out of resources: UN
• 2012/01/31: ABC(Au): World lacks food, fuel for booming population, warns UN
• 2012/01/30: BBC: UN panel aims for 'a future worth choosing'
  Growing inequality, environmental decline and "teetering" economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes. Health and education must improve, it says. Subsidies on fossil fuels should end, and governments must look beyond the standard economic indicator of GDP. The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability was established in 2010 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Its report will feed into discussions leading to the Rio+20 summit in June.

The Miller et al. paper on the Little Ice Age triggered a lot of interest:

• 2011/12/30: GRL: (ab$) Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks by Gifford H Miller et al.
• 2012/02/03: SciNews: Little Ice Age began with a bang
  Frozen moss suggests climate cooling kicked off fast, possibly with help from volcanoes
• 2012/01/30: FuturePundit: Volcanic Eruptions Caused Little Ice Age?
• 2012/01/31: NatureNB: Little Ice Age was caused by volcanism
• 2012/01/31: SciNow: Volcanoes Indicted for Europe's Long, Big Chill
• 2012/01/30: CSM: Volcanic eruptions emerge as lead cause for Little Ice Age
• 2012/01/31: CSM: Massive volcanic eruptions caused Little Ice Age, froze the Thames
• 2012/01/30: Eureka: New CU-Boulder-led study may answer questions about enigmatic Little Ice Age
• 2012/01/30: UCAR: Study may answer longstanding questions about Little Ice Age
• 2012/01/30: BBC: Volcanic origin for Little Ice Age
  The Little Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions, and sustained by changes in Arctic ice cover, scientists conclude.

The Lenton et al. paper made more than one person stop and think:

• 2012/02/01: Nature:GeoSci: (ab$) First plants cooled the Ordovician by Timothy M. Lenton et al.
• 2012/02/02: BBC: Humble moss helped to cool Earth and spurred on life
  Primitive moss-like plants could have triggered the cooling of the Earth some 470 million years ago, say researchers.
• 2012/02/01: Guardian(UK): First land plants may have plunged the Earth into a series of ice ages
• 2012/02/01: SciNow: Did Plants Freeze the Planet?
• 2012/02/01: Eureka: First plants caused ice ages

  With a strongly negative NAO, temperatures fell rapidly in Europe. People died:

• 2012/02/06: ABC(Au): Deadly cold snap cripples Europe
  The Arctic cold snap that has hit Europe for over a week has claimed nearly 300 lives, bringing air travel chaos to London and dumping snow as far south as Rome and even North Africa.
• 2012/02/04: CBC: Rome paralyzed by rare snowfall -- London cancels flights ahead of storm
• 2012/02/04: BBC: Europe freeze hits transport hubs
  Freezing weather has hit transport hubs across Europe, closing airports, blocking roads and halting trains.
• 2012/02/04: CCP: Science behind the big freeze: is climate change bringing the Arctic to Europe? A loss of sea ice could be a cause of the bitter winds that have swept across the UK in the past week, weather experts say
• 2012/02/03: BBC: Freezing Europe hit by Russian gas shortage
• 2012/02/03: Guardian(UK): European cold snap threatens energy crisis as death toll rises
• 2012/02/03: DerSpiegel: Rising Death Toll -- No End in Sight for European Deep Freeze
  Frigid temperatures and snowfall have swept across Europe over the last week, with well over 100 people having died due to the cold, most of them homeless. The dangerous weather is expected to continue.
• 2012/02/04: al Jazeera: Deadly freeze extends icy grip on Europe
  More than 200 killed across region as temperatures plunge to new lows, while vital gas supplies curtailed due to demand.
• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Homeless at risk in fatal European cold snap
• 2012/02/03: Wunderground: Europe cold wave deaths hit 200; low-snow winter for the U.S.
• 2012/02/03: BBC: Cold weather death toll passes 100 in Ukraine
• 2012/02/02: al Jazeera: Harsh winter kills scores in eastern Europe
  Temperatures drop to minus 30C and below, causing power outages, traffic chaos and widespread closures.
• 2012/02/02: CBC: Weather death toll rises in Eastern Europe -- Serbian official says 11,000 trapped by heavy snow
• 2012/02/02: Guardian(UK): Serbian villages stranded after heavy snow storms
• 2012/02/02: BBC: Europe freeze: More deaths in Ukraine and Poland
  Another 20 people have died in Ukraine and nine in Poland as temperatures fall below -30C (-22F), officials say. Europe's current cold snap has claimed more than 110 lives so far, including 63 in Ukraine and 29 in Poland.
• 2012/02/01: Maribo: Who to trust about climate change
• 2012/02/01: BBC: Europe freeze: Heavy snow across continent
  Heavy snow has caused disruption across Europe, carpeting much of Italy to the south and Turkey to the east. The freeze that has swept south through the continent has caused at least 80 deaths, mainly in Ukraine and Poland.
• 2012/02/01: CBC: Snow-stranded Europeans rescued as deaths leap to 79 -- Coldsnap continues in Eastern Europe
• 2012/02/01: al Jazeera: Extreme freeze claims lives in eastern Europe
  Dozens killed by cold in Ukraine, while Turkish coast guards seek missing sailors after cargo ship sinks in snowstorm.
• 2012/01/31: Wunderground: Bitter cold in Alaska and Europe; Alaska's -79°F reading bogus
• 2012/01/30: Wunderground: Bitter cold -65°F temperatures hit Alaska
• 2012/01/31: BBC: Cold weather kills dozens in eastern Europe
  At least 60 people have died due to freezing conditions caused by a cold snap in eastern and central Europe.
• 2012/01/31: CBC: European cold snap's death toll climbs to 58 -- Severe cold responsible for at least 30 deaths in Ukraine
• 2012/01/30: CBC: European cold snap kills at least 36 -- Ukraine, Poland, and Serbia among regions hit by extreme cold, power outages
• 2012/01/30: BBC: Deaths in Ukraine and Poland in freezing Europe weather
  At least 18 people have died in Ukraine and 10 in Poland after heavy snow fall and a sudden drop in temperatures across east Europe.
• 2012/01/30: al Jazeera: The North Atlantic Oscillation Explained
  The natural phenomenon dictates the severity of winter in the northern hemisphere
• 2012/01/30: al Jazeera: Winter finally arrives
  Temperatures across Europe and North Africa struggle under an icy blast
• 2012/01/29: CCP: Arctic Oscillation flips to extreme negative; temperatures at Svalbard expected to be in low to mid 40s (F) all week

  The WSJ-16 dentists:

• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au):TDU: Setting the record straight: Climate change experts respond
• 2012/01/31: GreenGrok: Wall Street Journal's Portrait of the Young Climate Scientist
• 2012/02/02: DeSmogBlog: Australian Meteorology Bureau Corrects Record On Former Research Head William Kininmonth's Actual Climate Change Experience
• 2012/02/01: P3: Whom to Trust on Climate Change
• 2012/02/01: CSW: "Like dentists practicing cardiology" -- Climate scientists respond to Wall Street Journal disinformer op-ed. When you're talking about planetary life suppport, it really matters what your credentials are
• 2012/02/01: TDC: Authors of Wall Street Journal climate piece downplay industry ties
  Half the authors of a controversial Wall Street Journal opinion piece denying the Earth's warming trend have ties to the oil and gas industry, a DailyClimate.org investigation finds.
• 2012/02/01: Guardian(UK): Wall Street Journal rapped over climate change stance
• 2012/02/01: QuarkSoup: The Well-Written WSJ Rebuttal
• 2012/02/01: S&R: 38 climate scientists respond to error-filled Wall Street Journal commentary
• 2012/02/01: PSinclair: Scientists Answer the Wall Street 16
• 2012/02/01: TP:JR: In Must-Read WSJ Letter, 3 Dozen Top Climate Scientists Slam Murdoch's 16 Posers: "Dentists Practicing Cardiology"
• 2012/01/31: GLaden: Actual Scientists Respond to Fake Scientists at Wall Street Journal
• 2012/01/31: PSinclair: The Wall Street 16 -- Hapless Happer Leads Clueless Geriatrics in WSJ Fiasco
• 2012/01/29: TP:JR: Panic Attack: Murdoch's Wall Street Journal Finds 16 Scientists to Push Pollutocrat Agenda With Long-Debunked Climate Lies
• 2012/01/29: BBickmore: The Daily Mail Prints Climate Nonsense
• 2012/01/29: Tamino: Some Questions for Rutan

  The threats & intimidation against climate scientists are orchestrated:

• 2012/02/04: CCP: Penn State defies Facebook campaign calling for it to drop climate lecture and cites its First Amendment commitment in supporting its climate scientist Michael Mann's right to give lecture
• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: Coal Industry Group Organizes Campaign to Harass Top Climate Scientist
• 2012/02/03: PSinclair: Climate Denial Thugs: Threats Against Climate Scientists Commonplace
• 2012/02/02: TP:JR: Coal-Powered PAC Runs Harassment Campaign Against Climate Scientist Michael Mann
• 2012/02/02: DeSmogBlog: Coal-Powered PAC Runs Harassment Campaign Against Climate Scientist Michael Mann
• 2012/02/: PhysicsToday: Climate scientists not cowed by relentless climate change deniers
• 2012/02/02: Ph&Ph: Attacks On Climate Scientists
• 2012/02/02: CCP: Climate scientists not cowed by relentless climate change deniers
  Groups that provide moral support, legal counsel, and swift rebuttals of misinformation are sprouting up.
• 2012/01/29: QuarkSoup: The ATI's Outrageous Spin of the Mann Emails

  Further Rodentia. Thus spake der Grundschwein:

• 2012/02/02: CSM: The science behind Groundhog Day (Hint: There isn't any.)
• 2012/02/02: Guardian(UK): Groundhog Day: six more weeks of winter, Phil? Not so fast, say rivals
• 2012/02/02: Wunderground: Six more weeks of non-winter
• 2012/02/02: CBC: Groundhog Day prophecies mixed on spring's arrival -- Will an unseasonably warm season usher in spring early?
• 2012/02/01: TP:JR: Groundhog Decade: We're Stuck in a Bad Movie, Where It's Always the Hottest Decade on Record

  Subsidies, tax exemptions, loan guarantees & grants weave a difficult to penetrate web:

• 2012/02/05: Grist: Just how big are subsidies to fossil-fuel companies? Help us find out

  Delving into the laws of thermodynamics this week:

• 2012/01/30: TSoD: "Blah blah blah" vs Equations

  John Cook and friends continue their point-counterpoint articles:

• 2012/02/05: SkeptiSci: NASA scientists expect more rapid global warming in the very near future (part 2) by Rob Painting
• 2012/02/04: SkeptiSci: Cool climate papers 2011 by Ari Jokimäki
• 2012/02/02: SkeptiSci: Still Going Down the Up Escalator by dana1981
• 2012/02/02: SkeptiSci: Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate by Kevin Trenberth
• 2012/02/02: SkeptiSci: Measurements show Earth heating up, think tanks & newspapers disagree by MarkR
• 2012/02/01: SkeptiSci: Climate change policy: Oil's tipping point has passed by John Hartz
• 2012/01/31: SkeptiSci: New research from last week 4/2012 by Ari Jokimäki
• 2012/01/31: SkeptiSci: The Latest Denialist Plea for Climate Change Inaction by dana1981

  A note on theFukushima disaster:

  It is evident that the Fukushima disaster is going to persist for some time. TEPCO says 6 to 9 months. The previous Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, said decades. Now the Japanese government is talking about 30 years. [Whoops, that has now been updated to 40 years.] We'll see. At any rate this situation is not going to be resolved any time soon and deserves its own section.
  Meanwhile...
  It is very difficult to know for sure what is really going on at Fukushima. Between the company [TEPCO], the Japanese government, the Japanese regulator [NISA], the international monitor [IAEA], as well as independent analysts and commentators, there is a confusing mish-mash of information. One has to evaluate both the content and the source of new information.
  How knowledgeable are they [about nuclear power and about Japan]?
  Do they have an agenda?
  Are they pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear?
  Do they want to write a good news story?
  Do they want to write a bad news story?
  Where do they rate on a scale of sensationalism?
  Where do they rate on a scale of play-it-down-ness?
  One fundamental question I would like to see answered:
  If the reactors are in meltdown, how can they be in cold shutdown?

  Not much good news coming out of Fukushima:

• 2012/02/03: Independent(UK): Bird numbers plummet around stricken Fukushima plant
  Researchers working around Japan's disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant say bird populations there have begun to dwindle, in what may be a chilling harbinger of the impact of radioactive fallout on local life.
• 2012/02/03: EneNews: AP: Integrity of Reactor No. 4 building a major concern among experts -- Collapse of spent fuel pool could be even worse than 3 reactor meltdowns
• 2012/02/04: EneNews: Journalist: Tepco whistleblower says Reactor 4 "very unstable and dangerous" -- More people are concerned about situation
• 2012/02/03: EneNews: Report: Rapidly dropping water level at Fukushima Daiichi No. 4 - Leak continues from Reactor Well/SFP/DS - Almost 3 times higher on Monday
• 2012/02/01: Reuters: Major new leak at Japan's nuclear plant [Fukushima reactor No.4] - Kyodo
• 2012/01/31: WNN: IAEA reviews Japan's nuclear restart process
• 2012/01/31: EneNews: Member of Japan Parliament: I now believe Tepco was trying to hide radiation levels measured after quake -- People in Japan deceived (video)
• 2012/02/01: ABC(Au): UN supports Japan reactor restarts
  United Nations nuclear experts have backed Japan's efforts to prove its nuclear plants can withstand massive natural disasters. The endorsement bolsters the Japanese government's campaign to restart idle reactors.
• 2012/01/31: al Jazeera: IAEA approves Japan nuclear 'stress tests'
  The UN watchdog says it is satisfied with series of safety tests carried out by Japan in wake of Fukushima meltdown.
• 2012/01/30: UN: UN experts begin assessment of effects of Fukushima nuclear accident
• 2012/01/30: EneNews: Japan Times: More leaks found at Fukushima -- Water spews from 16 points -- Amount leaking at some facilities not revealed
• 2012/01/30: IAEA: Correction of Media Reports on Plans for IAEA "Fukushima Office"

  The Arctic melt continues to garner attention:

• 2012/02/04: CCP: National Snow and Ice Data Center Arctic Sea Ice Extent Graph Back Online - Ice Still In Record-Low Territory...
• 2012/02/01: QuarkSoup: 4th Lowest Arctic Sea Ice Extent for January
• 2012/01/26: AWI: New study shows correlation between summer Arctic sea ice cover and winter weather in Central Europe
• 2012/01/31: CCP: Arctic climate change 'to spark domino effect, according to Western Australia University researcher, Carlos Duarte
• 2012/01/30: ASI: 2012 Maximum Area Pool
• 2012/01/30: UWA: Arctic scientists warn of dangerous climate change
• 2012/01/30: CCP: Future of human kind faces dire consequences due to dangerous climate change in the Arctic, say leading international scientists from the University of Western Australia
• 2012/01/30: Eureka: The Arctic is already suffering the effects of a dangerous climate change
• 2012/01/29: ASI: New Data: Melt Ponds on Arctic Sea Ice

  As for the charismatic megafauna:

• 2012/01/31: SciNow: Killer Whale Menu Finally Revealed
• 2012/01/29: Eureka: What do killer whales eat in the Arctic? {[A: anything they want. -het]}

  That Damoclean sword still hangs overhead:

• 2012/02/03: GEB: How much time is there left to act?
  How much time is there left to act, before methane hydrate releases will lead to human extinction?

As for the geopolitics of Arctic resources:

• 2012/02/03: TP:JR: Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America's Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic
• 2012/01/31: Grist: Russians could not be more psyched about ice-free Arctic
• 2012/01/28: PostMedia: Russian mariners prepare for ice-free Arctic Ocean -- Climate change is a boon for shippers seeking to ply profitable northern routes
• 2012/01/31: NatureN: The great Arctic oil race begins -- Conservationists fear spills in icy waters as Norway awards oil-production licences

  While in Antarctica:

• 2012/02/04: CCentral: Image of the Day: A Crack Across the Pine Island Glacier
• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: NASA Image Shows New York City-Sized [Pine Island] Glacier About to Split from Antarctica
• 2012/02/03: Grist: Antarctica's about to lose a New York City-sized chunk
• 2012/02/01: P3: Lake Vostok WIll be Breached
• 2012/02/01: DM:80B: Scientists to Breach Buried Antarctic Lake, Untouched for Millions of Years

  The food crisis is ongoing:

• 2012/02/04: TP:JR: Drought May Cause Shutdown of Texas Rice Production
• 2012/02/02: DVoice: African Sahel Facing Slide Into Oblivion
• 2012/02/02: ProMedMail: Late blight, potato - UK: strain Green 33
• 2012/02/02: EarlyWarning: More 2011 Texas Crop Stats
• 2012/02/01: EarlyWarning: Texas vs US Soybean Yields
• 2012/02/01: al Jazeera: Imperialism 2.0: EU fosters Botswana degradation
  New requirements on beef exports could have a negative ecological impact on the country.
• 2012/01/31: PlanetArk: World Lacks Enough Food, Fuel As Population Soars: U.N.
• 2012/01/31: al Jazeera: Davos is a world apart from Niger's food crisis
  The people of Niger desperately need help and, as humanitarians, we all must act now to avert disaster.
• 2012/01/30: ABC(Au): Extreme heat hurts wheat yields
• 2012/01/30: PlanetArk: Extreme Heat Hurts Wheat Yields As World Warms: Study

  The state of the world's fisheries is a concern:

• 2012/02/02: al Jazeera: Pirate Fishing
  People & Power takes to the seas off Sierra Leone to investigate the multi-million dollar illegal fishing trade.
• 2012/02/01: TreeHugger: Turkish Fisherman Shot in Head as Fight Against Unsustainable Fishing Gets Ugly in Istanbul
• 2012/01/25: iWatchNews: 'Free-for-all' decimates fish stocks in the southern Pacific
• 2012/01/26: EAT: Slow motion train wreck, part 23: fish stock destruction
• 2012/02/01: ABC(Au): Fish shortage threatening Pacific nations
  Crucial fish species, lobsters and sea cucumbers are in danger of disappearing from Pacific Island coastlines unless local people take action to protect them, according to the region's leading fisheries experts.

Food Prices are still problematic:

• FAO: World Food Situation - Food Price Indices
• 2012/01/31: PlanetArk: Relief In U.S. Food Prices Seen As Crop Supplies Grow

  So, are these land grabs Colonialism V2.0?

• 2012/02/01: NatureN: African land grabs hinder sustainable development -- Sales of forest land to corporations are dispossessing inhabitants and harming ecosystems

  Regarding the genetic modification of food:

• 2012/02/02: ActivistPost: Monsanto-funded legislators suppress WA's GMO-label bills, lie about funding
• 2012/02/03: ActivistPost: Monsanto Forced Out of UK by Activists
• 2012/02/03: EurActiv: Danes seek compromise on GM crops
  Biotech companies should agree not to market genetically modified (GM) crops in member states wishing to ban their cultivation before seeking EU approval for their products, a draft Danish proposal shows. The compromise is designed to break a deadlock in talks among EU countries on draft EU rules to allow them to decide individually whether to grow or ban GM cultivation, which have made little headway since being proposed by the European Commission in 2010.
• 2012/01/30: Grist: Monsanto's new seeds could be a tech dead end

  And how are we going to feed 9 billion, 10 billion, 15 billion?

• 2012/01/31: ERW: Insight: Siberian agriculture could benefit from climate change
• 2012/02/03: Grist: Al rodente: Could squirrel meat come back into vogue?
• 2012/01/31: UN: UN scales up food assistance for more than 80,000 people in South Sudan
• 2012/01/31: UN: UN launches information system to boost disaster prevention, food security measures

  In the South Indian Ocean, Cyclone Iggy stayed safely out at sea:

• 2012/02/02: Eureka: NASA satellites see wind shear battering Tropical Depression Iggy
• 2012/01/31: Eureka: NASA sees strong thunderstorms still surround Cyclone Iggy's center

  While elsewhere in the hurricane wars:

• 2012/02/03: UN: Mozambique: UN agency begins food distribution to flood victims [post Dando & Funso]
• 2012/02/03: UN: Philippines: UN and partners seek more funding to help tropical storm [Washi] survivors
• 2012/02/01: CBC: Tropical cyclones to cause $109B in damages by 2100 -- More intense storms will become more frequent with climate change
• 2012/02/01: Yale: Tropical Cyclones to Cause Greater Damage
• 2012/02/01: TreeHugger: Tropical Storm Damages May Quadruple by 2100
• 2012/01/31: UN: Thousands affected by tropical storms in Mozambique -- UN humanitarian arm

  As for the temperature record:

• 2012/01/30: CSIRO: Warming in the Tasman Sea a global warming hot spot
  Oceanographers have identified a series of ocean hotspots around the world generated by strengthening wind systems that have driven oceanic currents, including the East Australian Current, polewards beyond their known boundaries.
• 2012/02/01: Guardian(UK): NASA's global temperatures in 2011 - [1] big picture
• 2012/02/01: PostMedia: Pace of warming quicker than previously thought, UVic researchers say
  Waterfront property owners in B.C. probably need to bolster defences against rising ocean levels over the next century and forestry companies should be looking nervously at the absence of bug-killing cold winters. An analysis of 62 years of Environment Canada weather data by the University of Victoria's Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium has found that B.C.'s temperature has been warming by about 0.25 degrees Celsius per decade. While that may sound minimal, it is substantially more than the 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade reported by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change for the years 1956 to 2005.
• 2012/01/31: CCP: People under 35 have never seen normal global temperatures
• 2012/01/30: moyhu: Reykjavik and GHCN adjustments
• 2012/01/30: CsiroNewsBlog: Warming in the Tasman Sea a global warming hot spot
• 2012/01/30: Tamino: USA48

  While in the paleoclimate:

• 2012/02/03: UCincinnati: Global Extinction: Gradual Doom Is Just As Bad As Abrupt
  Around 250 million years ago, most life on Earth was wiped out in an extinction known as the "Great Dying." A team led by University of Cincinnati geologist Thomas J. Algeo finds that the end came slowly from thousands of centuries of volcanic activity.
• 2012/01/31: PostMedia: 30,000-year-old bison bone yields new clues on climate-change adaptation
  A 30,000-year-old bison bone plucked from the thawed permafrost inside a Yukon gold mine has helped a team of Australian scientists make a potentially groundbreaking discovery about the way animals adapt to climate change.
• 2012/01/31: Eureka: Ancient DNA holds clues to climate change adaptation

  In the attribution debate:

• 2012/01/29: RealClimate: The AR4 attribution statement

  While on the ENSO front:

• 2012/02/04: QuarkSoup: Has The Current La Nina Peaked?
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au): Wet summer to continue for Eastern Australia
  The current La Niña weather pattern is likely to continue for at least another month according to the latest forecast from the Bureau of Meteorology. The news means more wet weather for the already rain soaked eastern parts of Australia.

Regarding the solar hypothesis:

• 2012/01/30: NASA: Earth's Energy Budget Remained Out of Balance Despite Unusually Low Solar Activity

  The cliff, aka tipping points, aka planetary boundaries, put in an appearance:

• 2012/01/30: CCP: Andrew Glikson: Trends and tipping point in the climate system: portents for the 21st century

  And the State of the Oceans:

• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Survey finds jellyfish takeover exaggerated
• 2012/02/01: NatureN: Marine ecology: Attack of the blobs -- Jellyfish will bloom as ocean health declines, warn biologists. Are they already taking over?
• 2012/02/01: SciNow: Big Storms Roil Even the Deep Ocean
• 2012/02/01: Eureka: Global experts question claims about jellyfish populations
• 2012/02/01: Eureka: Global experts question claims about jellyfish populations
• 2012/02/01: AIBS: Are Nuisance Jellyfish Really Taking Over the World's Oceans?

  What's new on the extinction front?

• 2012/02/04: ABC(Au): The critically endangered orange-bellied parrot appears to be moving closer to extinction

  Meanwhile in near earth orbit:

• 2012/01/31: NASA: NASA's GCPEX Mission: What We Don't Know about Snow

  More GW impacts are being seen:

• 2012/02/02: PlanetArk: Warm Winter Creates Winners And Losers In U.S. Economy
• 2012/02/01: SciAm:Obs: New Map Shows that Most Lyme-Infected Ticks Are in Northeast, Northern Midwest
• 2012/02/01: Wunderground: New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map for gardeners shows a warming climate
• 2012/01/31: PlanetArk: Insight: The Great Northern Migration -- Of U.S. Cattle
• 2012/01/30: PlanetArk: Snowy Owls Soar South From Arctic In Rare Mass Migration

  And then there are the world's forests:

• 2012/02/03: ERW: Insight: can afforestation mitigate climate change?
• 2012/02/04: GEP: Hopeful Signs for Reforestation in Africa
• 2012/02/01: Eureka: Yellow-cedar are dying in Alaska: Scientists now know why
• 2012/02/01: al Jazeera: The real cost of Brazil's dam
  Should a country's energy needs outweigh the social and ecological impacts of projects like the Belo Monte dam?
• 2012/01/31: CBC: Climate change shrinks forests in 3 Prairie provinces -- Finding belies assumption that global warming improves growing conditions
• 2012/01/29: Eureka: The good news about carbon storage in tropical vegetation
  New wall-to-wall carbon storage map can help developing nations track deforestation and report on emissions

Climate refugees are becoming an issue:

• 2012/02/01: EUO: Record 1,500 Africans died trying to reach Europe

  Yes we have no wacky weather, except:

• 2012/02/01: al Jazeera: Heavy snow blankets Japan
  Record snowfall is causing widespread disruption across much of the country's west and north.

This week in the New Normal -- extreme weather:

• 2012/01/30: TP:JR: Get Ready for Super-Extreme Weather: "We Are Just Now Experiencing the Full Effect of CO2 Emitted [by] the Late 1980s"

  As for heatwaves and wild fires:

• 2012/02/05: ABC(Au): Strong winds fan fires in Vic
  Grassfires have broken out across country Victoria as the state experiences warm and windy conditions.

Corals are a bellwether of the ocean's health:

• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Warming boosts some coral growth
• 2012/02/02: SciNow: Climate Change Okay for One Coral
• 2012/02/02: SciNews: Some corals like it hot -- Western Australian reefs faring better than eastern counterparts
• 2012/02/01: ABC(Au): Sea cucumber poo protecting coral reefs: scientists

  Glaciers are melting:

• 2012/02/02: UN: Threatened by climate change, glaciers now under attack from ice thieves - UN
• 2012/02/01: BBC: Chile: Man arrested over glacier ice theft
• 2012/02/01: Guardian(UK): Glacier thief arrested in Chile
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: Chilean Glacier Ice Heist Lands Thieves in Hot Water

  Sea levels are rising:

• 2012/02/03: CCP: Peter Sinclair: JPL's Josh Willis Looks Ahead to Continuing Sea Level Rise
• 2012/01/31: HotTopic: Water is rising
• 2012/01/30: TP:JR: With Billions Living Close to the Shore, Protecting Our Oceans Isn't Just a Conservation Issue
• 2012/01/31: TP:JR: Al Gore on the Story of Rising Seas: From Antarctica to Bangladesh

  As for hydrological cycle disruptions [floods & droughts]:

• 2012/02/05: CNN: Military aircraft dispatched in Australia floods
  Authorities: Military helicopters and cargo plane used to evacuate patients at hospital - Report: Body of woman who handed her son off to rescuers recovered - Thousands ordered to evacuate in towns in Queensland and New South Wales
• 2012/02/05: ABC(Au): Residents ordered out as record flood looms
  Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for the southern Queensland town of St George as authorities predict the Balonne River to peak at up to 15 metres in a record flood. The Bureau of Meteorology says the river is rising quickly and is likely to reach 14 metres by 9:00pm Monday evening and continue to rise throughout Tuesday, reaching a peak of up to 15 metres overnight on Tuesday.
• 2012/02/02: RawStory: Floods create 'inland sea' in Australia
• 2012/02/04: ABC(Au): Attention turns downstream as Moree floodwaters peak
  Authorities says heavy rain is easing across northern New South Wales, offering some relief to flood-stricken communities. About 16,000 people are isolated across the state, with the areas around Moree, Gunnedah and Wee Waa currently the worst hit.
• 2012/02/04: ABC(Au): Charleville levee holds as waters remain steady [pix]
• 2012/02/05: ABC(Au): Moree floods ease as threat moves west [pix]
• 2012/02/02: QuarkSoup: Cost of the Texas Drought
• 2012/02/03: PlanetArk: Drought, warmer Weather Persist In Much Of U.S.
• 2012/02/04: ABC(Au): Premier seeks help as flood disaster unfolds
  Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says she has asked the Defence Force for help with the state's unfolding flood disaster in the south.
• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Western floods worsen as Qld emergency services move into disaster mode
• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Towns on knife-edge as flood risk intensifies
  Floodwaters across southern Queensland are at record levels as hundreds of anxious residents bunker down for the night in evacuation centres.
• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Residents evacuated as floods drench southern Queensland
• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Record flooding strands NSW residents
  An emergency is unfolding across northern New South Wales, with record floodwaters isolating towns and forcing residents from their homes after days of heavy rain.
• 2012/02/02: P3: Some Improvement in Texas
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au): Floods force evacuations in NSW
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au): NSW town braces for historic flooding
  The New South Wales country town of Moree is bracing for its worst flood since 1976 with about 2,300 people ordered to leave their homes or businesses. The town will effectively be cut in half tonight when the council closes a major bridge and people are already on the move, packing up valuables and moving them to higher ground.
• 2012/02/01: al Jazeera: Australia awash -- Heavy rain is causing further flooding across eastern Australia
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au): More floods ahead for western Queensland towns
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au): Waters rise again in Charleville
  Authorities in south-western Queensland are closely monitoring rising river levels as flooding is compounded by more heavy rain in the region.
• 2012/02/01: ABC(Au): Families flee as flood isolates town
  Two families have been evacuated from a town cut off by the swollen Moonie River in the western Darling Downs.

Elsewhere on the mitigation front:

• 2012/02/01: JFleck: It's economics
• 2012/01/31: QuarkSoup: The Scope of the Carbon Problem

  Consider transportation & GHG production:

• 2012/02/01: CalcRisk: U.S. Light Vehicle Sales at 14.18 million annual rate in January
• 2012/02/01: CBC: Air travel up 6% in 2011 [says IATA]
• 2012/01/31: Grist: Maine to create car-free town with 'really narrow streets'
• 2012/01/29: TCoE: Top selling vehicles in the US

  While in the endless quest for zero energy, sustainable buildings and practical codes:

• 2012/01/26: Good: Why Historic Buildings Are Greener Than LEED-Certified New Ones
• 2012/02/01: SBO: Net-zero energy building to become $1.3 trillion market
  With green building becoming mainstream, the next big thing for the industry is in the realm of net-zero: buildings that produce all the energy they need. Pike Research released a report this week indicating that net-zero construction will become a $1.3 trillion global business by 2035, driven largely by demand from Europe where zero-energy requirements are increasingly becoming required by building codes.
• 2012/02/02: Grist: Austin gets a super swank zero-energy suburb
• 2012/01/31: Eureka: Columbia engineers map energy use in NYC buildings

  As for carbon sequestration:

• 2012/02/04: GEP: New NGO CCS Network
• 2012/01/31: GEP: New Funding for CCS in Australia

  Large scale geo-engineering keeps popping up:

• 2012/02/02: GreenGrok: Two Closer Looks At Geoengineering
• 2012/01/: CBD: Documents for second peer review

  Meanwhile in the journals:

• 2012/02/03: ACP: Seasonal variations of stable carbon isotopic composition and biogenic tracer compounds of water-soluble organic aerosols in a deciduous forest by Y. Miyazaki et al.
• 2012/02/03: ACPD: Atmospheric histories and growth trends of C4F10, C5F12, C6F14, C7F16 and C8F18 by D. J. Ivy et al.
• 2012/02/03: ACPD: Central Arctic atmospheric summer conditions during the Arctic Summer Cloud Ocean Study (ASCOS): contrasting to previous expeditions by M. Tjernström et al.
• 2012/02/03: ACPD: Distributions, long term trends and emissions of four perfluorocarbons in remote parts of the atmosphere and firn air by J. C. Laube et al.
• 2012/02/03: ACPD: Projections of mid-century summer air-quality for North America: effects of changes in climate and precursor emissions by J. Kelly et al.
• 2012/02/02: TC: Influence of sea ice lead-width distribution on turbulent heat transfer between the ocean and the atmosphere by S. Marcq & J. Weiss
• 2012/02/03: TCD: Quantification of ikaite in Antarctic sea ice by M. Fischer et al.
• 2012/02/01: TCD: Evaluation of the criticality of cracks in ice shelves using finite element simulations by C. Plate et al.
• 2012/02/04: AGWObserver: Cool climate papers 2011
• 2012/02/03: ESDD: On the determination of the global cloud feedback from satellite measurements by T. Masters
• 2012/02/03: CP: Northern Hemisphere temperature patterns in the last 12 centuries by F. C. Ljungqvist et al.
• 2012/02/02: CP: Warm Middle Jurassic-Early Cretaceous high-latitude sea-surface temperatures from the Southern Ocean by H. C. Jenkyns et al.
• 2012/02/02: CP: Reconstruction of southeast Tibetan Plateau summer climate using tree ring O18: moisture variability over the past two centuries by C. Shi et al.
• 2012/01/31: CP: Towards orbital dating of the EPICA Dome C ice core using ?O2/N2 by A. Landais et al.
• 2012/01/30: CP: Bridging the Faraoni and Selli oceanic anoxic events: late Hauterivian to early Aptian dysaerobic to anaerobic phases in the Tethys by K. B. Föllmi et al.
• 2012/01/31: CPD: dentification of climatic state with limited proxy data by J. D. Annan & J. C. Hargreaves
• 2012/01/30: CPD: Planetary fertility during the past 400 ka based on the triple isotope composition of O2 in trapped gases from the Vostok ice core by T. Blunier et al.
• 2012/01/30: CPD: Ranges of moisture-source temperatures estimated from Antarctic ice core stable isotope records over the glacial-interglacial cycles by R. Uemura et al.
• 2012/02/03: Science: (ab$) Growth of Western Australian Corals in the Anthropocene by Timothy F. Cooper et al.
• 2012/02/02: ACP: Impact of the isoprene photochemical cascade on tropical ozone by F. Paulot et al.
• 2012/02/01: ACP: Examination of aerosol distributions and radiative effects over the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea region during ICARB using satellite data and a general circulation model by R. Cherian et al.
• 2012/02/01: ACP: A simple relationship between cloud drop number concentration and precursor aerosol concentration for the regions of Earth's large marine stratocumulus decks by D. A. Hegg et al.
• 2012/01/30: ACP: Link between local scale BC emissions in the Indo-Gangetic Plains and large scale atmospheric solar absorption by P. S. Praveen et al.
• 2012/02/02: ACPD: Signals of El Niño Modoki in the tropical tropopause layer and stratosphere by F. Xie et al.
• 2012/02/01: ACPD: Effects of cosmic ray decreases on cloud microphysics by J. Svensmark et al.
• 2012/01/31: ACPD: Black carbon from ships: a review of the effects of ship speed, fuel quality and exhaust gas scrubbing by D. A. Lack & J. J. Corbett
• 2012/01/31: ACPD: Interaction of anthropogenic and natural emission sources during a wild-land fire event -- influence on ozone formation by E. Bossioli et al.
• 2012/01/31: ACPD: The scavenging processes controlling the seasonal cycle in Arctic sulphate and black carbon aerosol by J. Browse et al.
• 2012/01/31: ACPD: Uncertainties of parameterized near-surface downward longwave and clear-sky direct radiation by S. Gubler et al.
• 2012/01/30: ACPD: Development of a climate record of tropospheric and stratospheric ozone from satellite remote sensing: evidence of an early recovery of global stratospheric ozone by J. R. Ziemke & S. Chandra
• 2012/01/30: ACPD: North Atlantic Oscillation and tropospheric ozone variability in Europe: model analysis and measurements intercomparison by F. S. R. Pausata et al.
• 2012/01/29: Nature:CC: (ab$) Estimated carbon dioxide emissions from tropical deforestation improved by carbon-density maps by A. Baccini et al.
• 2012/01/29: Nature:CC: (ab$) Enhanced warming over the global subtropical western boundary currents by Lixin Wu et al.
• 2012/02/01: Nature:GeoSci: (ab$) First plants cooled the Ordovician by Timothy M. Lenton et al.
• 2012/02/01: PLoS One: Potent Phototoxicity of Marine Bunker Oil to Translucent Herring Embryos after Prolonged Weathering by John P. Incardona et al.
• 2012/02/02: PLoS One: Implications of Extreme Life Span in Clonal Organisms: Millenary Clones in Meadows of the Threatened Seagrass Posidonia oceanica by Sophie Arnaud-Haond et al.
• 2012/01/31: PNAS: (ab$) Preceramic maize from Paredones and Huaca Prieta, Peru by Alexander Grobman et al.
• 2012/01/31: PNAS: (ab$) Exceptionally preserved crustaceans from western Canada reveal a cryptic Cambrian radiation by Thomas H. P. Harvey et al.
• 2012/01/31: GMD: A Lagrangian model of air-mass photochemistry and mixing using a trajectory ensemble: the Cambridge Tropospheric Trajectory model of Chemistry And Transport (CiTTyCAT) version 4.2 by T. A. M. Pugh et al.
• 2012/01/30: GMD: Climate forcing reconstructions for use in PMIP simulations of the Last Millennium (v1.1) by G. A. Schmidt et al.
• 2012/01/30: GMDD: A standard test case suite for two-dimensional linear transport on the sphere by P. H. Lauritzen et al.
• 2012/01/31: OSD: Model study on horizontal variability of nutrient N/P ratio in the Baltic Sea and its impacts on primary production, nitrogen fixation and nutrient limitation by Z. Wan et al.
• 2012/01/30: OSD: Operational SAR-based sea ice drift monitoring over the Baltic Sea by J. Karvonen
• 2012/01/31: TCD: Sensitivity of basal conditions in an inverse model: Vestfonna Ice-Cap, Nordaustlandet/Svalbard by M. Schäfer et al.
• 2012/01/30: TCD: Glacier changes and climate trends derived from multiple sources in the data scarce Cordillera Vilcanota region, Southern Peruvian Andes by N. Salzmann et al.
• 2012/01/30: AGWObserver: New research from last week 4/2012
• 2012/01/29: Nature:CC: (ab$) Extreme heat effects on wheat senescence in India by David B. Lobell et al.
• 2011/12/30: GRL: (ab$) Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks by Gifford H Miller et al.

  And other significant documents:

• 2012/01/30: UN:GSP: [link to 922k pdf] Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing

  As for miscellaneous science:

• 2012/02/03: P3: Economic costs of ocean acidification: a look into the impacts on global shellfish production by Daiju Narita et al.
• 2012/02/03: CChallenge: NCAR and UCAR's Staff Notes revealed
• 2012/02/02: BBC: Seagrass 'tens of thousands of years old'
  Meadows of seagrass found in the Mediterranean Sea are likely to be thousands of years old, a study shows. Researchers found genetically identical samples of Posidonia oceanica up to 15km apart, which suggested that the species was extremely long-lived. The team added that the organism - which provides food and shelter for many species - is under threat from climate change.
• 2012/01/31: P3: Observed changes in top-of-the-atmosphere radiation and upper-ocean heating consistent within uncertainty by Norman G. Loeb et al.
• 2012/02/01: NatureN: Japan plans to merge major science bodies -- Drive to save money could increase bureaucracy
• 2012/01/31: Eureka: Ancient DNA holds clues to climate change adaptation
• 2012/01/30: MGS: Starting a bestiary of oscillations and cycles

  What's new in models?

• 2012/01/31: ERabett: Mutterings from elsewhere

  What developments in the ongoing struggle for Free/Open Science?

• 2012/02/02: EnergyBulletin: Open access science
• 2012/02/03: ERabett: More on Scientific Publishing
• 2012/02/01: ScienceInsider: Thousands of Scientists Vow to Boycott Elsevier to Protest Journal Prices
• 2012/01/30: InternetEvolution: The Web Could Transform Science (If Allowed to Do So)
• 2012/01/30: Ph&Ph: Boycott Elsevier?
• 2012/01/30: NatureNB: F1000 launches fast, open science publishing for biology and medicine
• 2012/01/30: RetractionWatch: An arXiv for all of science? F1000 launches new immediate publication journal
• 2012/01/30: DM:CV: Boycott Elsevier

  Regarding Rees:

• 2012/02/03: EnergyBulletin: Bill Rees' last lecture
• 2012/02/02: Tyee: Bill Rees' Last Lecture -- Retiring after 40 years, one of Canada's intellectual eco-giants leaves behind a tremendous footprint

  Regarding Mann:

• 2012/02/05: CCP: Exonerated climate science professor, Michael Mann, speaks about the attacks on his work and reputation and their effect on his life and work

  Regarding Hansen:

• 2012/01/31: SolveC: Texas Heat Wave Caused by Global Warming, NASA's Hansen Says
• 2012/02/01: TreeHugger: Top Climate Scientist Says Heat Waves in Texas & Moscow Caused by Global Warming [Hansen]
• 2012/01/29: CCurrents: James Hansen Risks Handcuffs To Make His Research Clear
• 2012/01/29: CCurrents: Cowards In Our Democracies by James Hansen

  There is a steady dribble of Rio+20 Conference news:

• 2012/01/30: UN: Top UN officials discuss preparations for sustainable development conference

  While at the UN:

• 2012/02/01: UN: New UN initiative aims to harness power of social media to fight global hunger
• 2012/02/01: IRIN: In Brief: Weather data for all
  Disaster risk reduction officials planning emergency responses now have the option to consult a new online international weather, climate and water system operated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
• 2012/02/01: TMoS: It May Not Sound Like Much, But...
• 2012/01/31: WMO: New Weather and Climate Information System Becomes Operational
  WMO Information System boosts data exchange for disaster risk reduction, forecasting, predictions and service delivery for food security and health
• 2012/01/31: UN: Reform of green institutions 'imperative' for sustainable development - Assembly chief
• 2012/01/30: CBC: UN report calls for 'ever-green' energy revolution -- Extols use of more wind, solar and other renewable sources of energy

  The Fifth IPCC report is coming up:

• 2012/01/31: QuarkSoup: No Apparent Legal Basis for IPCC Removal Requests
• 2012/01/31: QuarkSoup: AR5 First Order Draft Available
• 2012/01/29: QuarkSoup: John Houghton on IPCC Transparency

  And on the carbon trading front:

• 2012/02/03: EurActiv: Hedegaard dismisses 'politically regulated' carbon price
  Connie Hedegaard, the EU's climate action commissioner, has rejected calls to introduce a price floor to sustain Europe's depressed carbon market, saying she does not want a "politically regulated system". In a wide-ranging interview with EurActiv, she also called for rolling back fossil fuel subsidies and shifting them to renewable energies instead.

The Robin Hood tax, aka the Tobin tax, aka the Bank tax, aka the Financial Transaction tax keeps coming up:

• 2012/02/03: EUO: EU commission plans new spin on financial tax
• 2012/01/30: CBC: France pitches 'Robin Hood' tax
• 2012/01/29: BBC: Sarkozy announces French financial transaction tax
  French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced plans to introduce a tax on financial transactions.

How will Carbon Labelling work?

• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: Supermarket [Tesco] May Cancel Carbon Labeling Scheme
• 2012/01/30: Guardian(UK): Tesco drops carbon-label pledge
  The supermarket blamed the amount of work involved and other retailers for failing to follow its lead

On the international political front, tensions continue to rise as the USA & Israel threaten Iran:

• 2012/02/01: InformedComment: Chart: Euro-American boycott of Iranian Petroleum would Fail
• 2012/01/31: EnergyBulletin: Hormuz-Mania: Why closure of the Straits of Hormuz could ignite a war and a global depression by Michael Klare

  In the "global competition for natural resources":

• 2012/02/02: PlanetArk: China Says Ready To Defend Its Rare Earth Policies
• 2012/02/02: GRC: Shortages of rare minerals: China's strategic control over terbium, yttrium, dysprosium, europium and neodymium
• 2012/01/31: EurActiv: EU wins WTO battle against China over raw materials
  China lost an appeal at the World Trade Organisation on Monday (30 January) in a case about its export restrictions of raw materials. The WTO's final ruling in the case was welcomed by the EU's trade chief and business leaders in Europe.
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: Scarce Supply of "Hitchhiker" Metals Could Hold Back Clean Technology
• 2012/01/31: BWeek: China-Based Hackers Target Law Firms to Grab Secret Deal Data
  China-based hackers looking to derail the $40 billion acquisition of the world's largest potash producer by an Australian mining giant zeroed in on offices on Toronto's Bay Street, home of the Canadian law firms handling the deal. Over a few months beginning in September 2010, the hackers rifled one secure computer network after the next, eventually hitting seven different law firms as well as Canada's Finance Ministry and the Treasury Board, according to Daniel Tobok, president of Toronto-based Digital Wyzdom. His cyber security company was hired by the law firms to assist in the probe. The investigation linked the intrusions to a Chinese effort to scuttle the takeover of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. by BHP Billiton Ltd. as part of the global competition for natural resources, Tobok said. Such stolen data can be worth tens of millions of dollars and give the party who possesses it an unfair advantage in deal negotiations, he said.
• 2012/01/30: BBC: China loses WTO appeal over raw materials exports

  As the EU-ETS is applied to airlines, we will see who is serious about reducing carbon emissions:

• 2012/02/01: EurActiv: US Congress ups the ante on EU aircraft emissions law
  The US Congress will formally express its opposition to an EU law aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from jetliners, a thorny diplomatic issue that has threatened to escalate transatlantic trade tensions. House and Senate negotiators have agreed to a provision in sweeping aviation legislation that would question Europe's mandate to force airlines to pay for their carbon emissions, while flying in Europe. Their move follows the partial activation of the EU's Emissions Trading System carbon registry on 30 January...
• 2012/01/31: PlanetArk: EU Takes Next Step In Making Airlines Pay For Carbon

  While in the solar panel trade war between China and the USA:

• 2012/01/19: Globalist: Solar Panels in China: An Emerging U.S.-China Trade Dispute?

  The issue of the law and activism is playing out around the world:

• 2012/02/01: BBC: Undercover police officer Mark Kennedy 'defied' bosses
  An undercover policeman whose actions led to the collapse of a trial of environmental protesters had "defied" management instructions, a report says. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary reviewed the activities of Mark Kennedy and other undercover officers. The inspectorate found that Mr Kennedy, who infiltrated environmental groups, helped unearth "serious criminality". But it said he was inadequately supervised and oversight of undercover officers needed to be strengthened.

What are the activists up to?

• 2012/02/02: ERabett: A lesson for Al Gore and James Hansen
• 2012/02/02: TreeHugger: Environmental Extremists Are An Asset to Our Movement
• 2012/02/01: AlterNet: New Rules for Radicals: 10 Ways To Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World
• 2012/02/01: TP:JR: Anti-Fracking Activists Poach the X Games Half Pipe Competition
• 2012/01/29: CCurrents: Climate Change Movements: Where Are We Going?
• 2012/01/31: OpenDem: How to create political space for climate action?

  Regarding Water Politics and Business:

• 2012/02/04: TreeHugger: China's Largest Freshwater Lake Dries Up: Is the Massive Three Gorges Dam to Blame?
• 2012/02/02: JFleck: Texas drought resiliency update
• 2012/01/31: BBC: Seven detained over China river cadmium spill
  Seven chemical company officials have been detained over industrial waste that polluted a river in China's Guangxi region, state media said. Cadmium pollutants were detected in the Longjiang River on 15 January after tests were carried out on dead fish. The level then was 80 times the official limit, regional environment protection official Feng Zhennian said.
• 2012/01/30: Guardian(UK): Cadmium spill threatens water supplies of major Chinese city
  Emergency personnel engaged in a desperate effort to prevent a toxic spill from contaminating Liuzhou's water
• 2012/01/31: al Jazeera: Floods and drought threaten Thailand crops
  Water management is a major problem in the country where many farmers risk losing their crops and income.
• 2012/01/30: JFleck: Stuff I wrote elsewhere: wastewater reuse
• 2012/01/29: JFleck: Colorado River models: wrong but useful
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: Cadmium Spill In Chinese River Threatens Water Supply for Over 1 Million People

  As for SW tools:

• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: Just Science iPhone App Simplifies Climate Change Information

  So what's new on the education front?

• 2012/02/04: RealClimate: So What's A Teacher to Do?
• 2012/01/31: MGS: Undergraduate Opportunities from NASA and NSF
• 2012/01/26: AlterNet: Conservatives Use Creationist Playbook to Attack Climate Change Education in Schools

  Who's making predictions this week?

• 2012/02/01: CBC: Warm winter ahead for most of Canada -- Unseasonably high temperatures until spring, Environment Canada forecasts
• 2012/01/31: QuarkSoup: My Prediction for the January UAH Temperature
• 2012/01/31: CBC: Winter forecast a big whoops for Environment Canada

  And on the American political front:

• 2012/02/05: CSM: Solar energy subsidies: sticky wicket for Tea Party recipient?
  Solar energy companies owned by a tea party Republican running for an open U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin who is strongly opposed to the 2009 federal stimulus package have received $500,000 in grants under the program.
• 2012/02/03: AutoBG: Who was for, who was against CARB's ZEV mandate "over-compliance" rule
• 2012/02/02: ActivistPost: Monsanto-funded legislators suppress WA's GMO-label bills, lie about funding
• 2012/02/03: Grist: How the Sierra Club and the natural gas industry broke up
• 2012/02/02: DeSmogBlog: Congressional 'Scientific Integrity' Hearing On Fracking In WY Is Quite Lacking In Scientists
• 2012/02/01: GLaden: Minnesotan Republicans Disrupt Attempts to Save Civilization From Itself
• 2012/01/30: CDreams: Faustian Bargain: Proposal Seeks to Swap National Forest Land for Strip Mining -- Shawnee National Forest would swap lands with Peabody Energy
• 2012/01/30: HuffPo: The Republicans Misread of Environmental Politics
• 2012/01/31: TP:JR: Climate Action Opponents Are Ensuring the Outcome They Claim to Oppose: Big Government [Parenti]
• 2012/01/31: PlanetArk: U.S. Duties On China Solar Would Kill Jobs: [CASE] Report
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: Natural Gas: The Signs They Are A-Changin' In New York
• 2012/01/30: PSinclair: D. R. Tucker: No Hope for Conservative Change

  The BP disaster continues to twist US politics:

• 2012/02/02: DeSmogBlog: Waterkeeper Groups Sue Over Gulf Oil Leak Gushing For Seven Years And Counting
• 2012/02/01: PlanetArk: Halliburton Wins Ruling Vs BP Over Gulf Oil Spill
• 2012/01/30: PlanetArk: BP Fails To Shift $15 Billion Oil Spill Costs Onto Transocean
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: BP Knew 3.4 Million Gallons Per Day Could Spill, But Urged Staff "Not to Communicate to Anyone on This."

  On the 2012 campaign trail:

• 2012/02/05: JQuiggin: Republican idiocracy
• 2012/02/04: CSM: Abortion, birth control becoming major campaign issues
• 2012/02/04: al Jazeera: Romney wins Nevada Republican caucuses
  Frontrunner for Republican nomination to run for US president wins eastern state.
• 2012/02/04: BBC: Nevada Republicans favour Romney in early results
• 2012/02/03: Grist: Roseanne Barr wants to be the Green Party nominee for president
• 2012/02/03: CSW: Questions from Al Jazeera on US climate and environmental policy in an election year
• 2012/02/03: CCurrents: The Peak Oil Crisis: Election 2012
• 2012/02/02: CCurrents: No Matter Who Wins [the presidential race], Americans Lose
• 2012/02/03: TP:JR: Romney to Nevadans: I Don't Know 'What The Purpose is' of Public Lands
• 2012/02/03: CSM: No joke: Comedienne Roseanne Barr seeks Green Party presidential nod
• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: Roseanne Barr Running For Green Party Presidential Nomination
• 2012/02/02: EnergyBulletin: The Peak Oil Crisis: Election 2012
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: How Important Will Fracking Be To Voters During The Next Election? Not Very, If Natural Gas Stays Cheap
• 2012/01/31: BBC: Mitt Romney scores big Florida primary win
• 2012/01/31: Wunderground:RR: Climate Science and the 2012 Election
• 2012/01/29: TruthOut: The Party of Our Discontent? An Interview With Green Party Candidate Jill Stein
• 2012/01/31: Grist: Rocky's road: One of the country's greenest mayors guns for the White House [2012]
• 2012/01/23: AlterNet: 'Let's Stay Together' -- Can Obama's Charm Offensive Woo Back Disgruntled Progressives?
• 2012/01/29: AlterNet: 5 Dishonest Ad Campaigns Coming Your Way For Election 2012

  The Keystone XL saga rolls along:

• 2012/02/01: Grist: Keystone XL opponents need a jobs program
• 2012/02/01: OilChange: Keystone XL Becoming Key Election Issue
• 2012/01/31: PlanetArk: Keystone XL Bill Gets 44 Senators On Board
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: How the Keystone XL Could Still Lurch Back to Life
• 2012/01/30: PlanetArk: Keystone To Be Linked To U.S. Highway Bill: Boehner
• 2012/01/29: TheHill:e2W: Boehner says GOP will add Keystone provision to infrastructure bill
• 2012/01/30: OilChange: TransCanada "Violating Laws" Over KXL Jobs Claim
• 2012/01/30: CBC: Republicans move for Keystone control
  Congressional Republicans are refusing to back down in their attempts to win speedy approval of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, vowing to link approval of the controversial project to a new jobs bill being introduced next week. "All options are on the table," John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, said Sunday on ABC's This Week.
• 2012/01/29: TStar: TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline will go ahead, Republicans threaten

  The ALEC reveal:

• 2012/02/03: CCP: Oops: Florida Republican (state Rep. Rachel Burgin) Forgets To Remove ALEC Mission Statement From Boilerplate Anti-Tax Bill

  Enter one Republican; exit one Progressive; Result? Bad policy and the Susan G Komen for the Cure controversy:

• 2012/02/03: DawgsBlawg: Fisking Komen's non-apology apology
• 2012/02/03: Guardian(UK): Susan G Komen in U-turn over Planned Parenthood funding cut
  Nancy Brinker, cancer charity's CEO, apologises for 'recent decisions' and says Komen will honour existing grants
• 2012/02/03: S&R: Komen Foundation pretends to change its mind. One corporate communications executive wonders: is the public stupid enough to buy it?
• 2012/02/04: S&R: The Komen "reversal": a crushing failure of America's newsrooms
• 2012/02/04: LFR: The WATB reaction from the right over the grass roots push back over Komen's political coming out
• 2012/02/02: DemNow: After Right-Wing Campaign, Leading Breast Cancer Charity Komen Drops Funding for Planned Parenthood
• 2012/02/04: AlterNet: 5 Important Lessons from the Komen/Planned Parenthood Fiasco (Don't Mess With Women's Health)
• 2012/02/03: Wonkette: Komen Charity Reverses Weird New Pro-Breast Cancer For Poors Policy
• 2012/02/03: al Jazeera: US health group drops Planned Parenthood cuts
  Breast cancer charity restores funding to reproductive health organisation after pressure from women's health advocates. After three days of controversy, a renowned breast cancer charity in the United States is reversing its prior decision to cut breast-screening grants to the country's most well-known reproductive health organisation. "We want to apologise to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives," a Susan G Komen for the Cure statement said on Friday.
• 2012/02/03: MoJo: Komen Foundation Completes Its Triple Backflip
• 2012/02/02: NYT: A Painful Betrayal
  With its roster of corporate sponsors and the pink ribbons that lend a halo to almost any kind of product you can think of, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has a longstanding reputation as a staunch protector of women's health. That reputation suffered a grievous, perhaps mortal, wound this week from the news that Komen, the world's largest breast cancer organization, decided to betray that mission. It threw itself into the middle of one of America's nastiest political battles, on the side of hard-right forces working to demonize Planned Parenthood and undermine women's health and freedom.
• 2012/02/02: AlterNet: 6 Things You Need To Know About the Komen Foundation/Planned Parenthood Controversy
• 2012/02/02: AlterNet: Komen Website Hacked, Planned Parenthood Rakes in Donations, and News Surfaces That Komen Official Resigned Over Decision
• 2012/02/02: BBC: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will give $250,000 (£158,000) to women's group Planned Parenthood after a key breast cancer charity cut its grants
• 2012/02/02: Guardian(UK): [Michael] Bloomberg offers $250,000 to Planned Parenthood to make up funds shortfall
• 2012/02/01: KSJT: The blogs are all over Komen-Planned Parenthood funding story
• 2012/01/31: Guardian(UK): Planned Parenthood blames pro-life 'bullying' after cancer charity cuts funds

  Police state Amerika shows its face:

• 2012/02/02: DemNow: "Gasland" Director Josh Fox Arrested at Congressional Hearing on Natural Gas Fracking
• 2012/02/01: ArtThreat: Gasland director arrested in Washington -- Politicians have acclaimed filmmaker hauled away from hearing
• 2012/02/01: DeSmogBlog: Video of Josh Fox Being Arrested At House Energy Hearing, First Amendment Rights Ignored
• 2012/02/01: Grist: "Gasland" director arrested for filming in Congress
• 2012/02/01: TreeHugger: Gasland Director Josh Fox Arrested While Trying to Film Congressional Fracking Hearing
• 2012/02/01: DeSmogBlog: Josh Fox Arrested For "Unlawful Entry" At Congressional Fracking Public Hearing, GOP Attacks 1st Amendment Rights

  A significant proportion of American weather men are climate skeptics. Why?

• 2012/02/03: PlanetArk: Storm Over Climate Change Among Weather Forecasters
• 2012/01/31: GLaden: Meteorologist Exposed as Scientific Fraud (And a really cool graphic)
• 2012/01/30: HuffPo: On Climate Change, Weathercasters May Be Misguiding Their Viewers

  The Obama chatter is nonstop:

• 2012/02/02: DemNow: Obama's Support for Natural Gas Drilling "A Painful Moment" for Communities Exposed to Fracking
• 2012/02/02: AlterNet: Gasland Director Josh Fox: Obama's Support for Natural Gas Drilling 'A Painful Moment' for Communities Exposed to Fracking
• 2012/02/02: Guardian(UK): Republicans step up attacks on Obama's green agenda
  Karl Rove's political action committee releases advert attacking administration for funding collapsed solar panel company
• 2012/02/02: Guardian(UK): Why Barack Obama will have to talk about climate change
  Despite avoiding climate change in his State of the Union address, the Keystone XL pipeline and EPA regulations on power plants will make it hard to avoid
• 2012/01/30: SciAm:PI: State of the Union 2012: energy use and the military
• 2012/01/29: CSW: Boykoff: Obama's rhetoric of 'clean energy' vs. the reality of climate change

  The actions of the Obama administration are being watched closely:

• 2012/02/02: Grist: Government will develop wind energy off the Atlantic coast
• 2012/02/02: ScienceInsider: Whistleblower Lawsuit Puts Spotlight On FDA Technical Reviews
• 2012/02/02: TreeHugger: Obama Admin Fast-tracks Offshore Wind Power in Mid-Atlantic
• 2012/01/31: Grist: Say it ain't Kosovo: U.S. State Dept. pushes coal in Eastern Europe

  As for what is going on in Congress:

• 2012/02/02: TP:JR: GOP House Pushes a Fuel Dirtier and More 'Disastrous' Than the Tar Sands: Oil Shale
• 2012/02/02: Grist: Boehner's last stand: House leader wants to kill transit funding
• 2012/02/01: TP:JR: Spill, Baby, Spill: House Transportation Bill Is Another Giveaway to Big Oil
• 2012/02/01: Grist: A bill of goods: With their latest transportation bill, Republicans side with the suburbs
• 2012/02/01: UCSUSA: UCS Physicist to Testify Today Before House Subcommittee on Nuclear Waste Blue Ribbon Commission Report
• 2012/01/31: Grist: House Republicans' transportation bill contains zero good policy
• 2012/01/30: OilChange: The Best Bill Oil Money Can Buy

  While in the UK:

• 2012/02/03: Guardian(UK): Chris Huhne resigns over criminal charge in speeding case
• 2012/02/03: Guardian(UK): What are the key green policies in [newly appointed climate and energy secretary,] Ed Davey's in-tray?
  He must get to grips with energy suppliers and green campaigners -- but the toughest challenge for the new climate and energy secretary is likely to come from cabinet colleagues
• 2012/02/04: BBC: Green void looms after Huhne departure
  Chris Huhne's departure from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) sees the exit of a minister who is generally regarded as having fought tenaciously for "green" policies within the Cabinet. And it raises the question of what hue the self-proclaimed "greenest ever government" is likely to be in future.
• 2012/02/05: BBC: Wind farm subsidy cut urged by MPs
  More than 100 Conservative MPs have written to the prime minister urging him to cut subsidies for wind turbines. They also want planning rules changed to make it easier for local people to object to their construction. The Tory MPs - joined by some backbenchers from other parties - questioned the amount of money going to the sector during "straitened times". But the government said wind farms were a "cost-effective and valuable part of the UK's diverse energy mix"
• 2012/02/04: BBC: Anti-fracking demo in Enniskillen
  About 100 people have gathered in Enniskillen to demonstrate against the use of fracking to extract gas from shale rock in County Fermanagh.
• 2012/02/03: BBerg: U.K.'s Climate Plan May Risk Heating-Cost Surge in Cold Snaps
  The U.K. faces an additional burden in energy costs from plans to switch to electricity in home heating from natural gas, according to National Grid Plc. The government, chasing a target to cut carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, may push to heat almost all U.K. homes using electricity by that date, Marcus Stewart, future distribution networks manager at National Grid in Warwick, England, said in an e-mail yesterday. Currently, about 80 percent of the country's homes are heated by gas.
• 2012/02/03: BBerg: Huhne Resigns as U.K. Energy Secretary
• 2012/02/01: Guardian(UK): Can the UK achieve its carbon targets without nuclear power?
• 2012/01/31: Guardian(UK): Flood defences hit by government cuts 'mismatch', say MPs
  Committee claims large coalition cuts leave significant shortfall in protection of 5m UK homes at risk of flood damage
• 2012/01/31: BBC: Climate Change Commission says Wales on right path, but more action needed
  Wales is "on the right path" towards tackling climate change, but the Welsh government needs to do more to target additional emissions, a report says.

And in Europe:

• 2012/02/03: CBC: Europe braces for natural gas crisis
• 2012/02/01: SwissInfo: Swiss lose ground over global warming
  Environmental groups have slammed a government decision to compensate an increasing share of its greenhouse gas emissions outside Switzerland. The groups say the move shows the obvious failure of the official environmental policy as Switzerland is not even able to compensate half of its carbon dioxide (CO2) output with domestic measures. Karine Siegwart of the Federal Environment Office confirmed that Switzerland had lost its leading role as an eco-friendly country.
• 2012/02/02: GRC: "Hydrauliic Fracturing": Poland Gives Green Light to Massive Fracking Efforts
• 2012/02/03: EurActiv: Commission plays down risk of gas running short
  Squeezed supply of Russian gas to some EU countries fell further today (3 February), the European Commission said, but added the situation had not reached emergency levels despite freezing temperatures gripping much of Europe.
• 2012/02/03: EUO: EU funds spent on 'environmentally harmful' projects
  Waste incinerators instead of recycling, highways running through nature parks, airports in protected areas - 33 projects in central and eastern Europe funded with E16 billion out of the EU's regional policy coffers are "environmentally harmful", says a study published on Thursday (2 February) by Friends of the Earth Europe and Bankwatch, a coalition of environmental NGOs.
• 2012/02/03: EUO: Deja vu as Russia gas cuts hit eight more EU countries
• 2012/02/02: EurActiv: EU climate chief calls for 'much care' on biofuels
  The European Union's climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, has warned about expanding the use of biofuels as the EU executive finalises an assessment of the potentially damaging effects they may have over the earth's climate. She spoke to EurActiv as part of a wide-ranging exclusive interview on sustainability issues.
• 2012/02/02: EUO: EU wind policies: never enough of a good thing
• 2012/02/02: PlanetArk: Analysis: German Solar Groups Could Thrive On Subsidy Fears
• 2012/02/01: PlanetArk: Sustainable Energy Is Answer To Wider Crisis: EU's Hedegaard
• 2012/02/01: Google:AFP: Clouds gather over Spain's renewables sector as aid cut
• 2012/02/01: EurActiv: Oettinger calls for 'Europeanisation' of energy powers
  Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger has called for a pooling of national powers to set energy policy in Brussels after 2014, in an unscripted speech to European policymakers yesterday (31 January).
• 2012/02/01: BBC: 'Bullet sent' to French Green candidate Eva Joly
• 2012/01/31: EurActiv: Denmark puts 2030 emissions target on the agenda
  Europe's 27 environment ministers will call for a 40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2030 if they follow draft conclusions - seen by EurActiv - prepared by the Danish EU presidency ahead of a meeting on 9 March.
• 2012/01/31: OilChange: EU: Fracking Laws Are Adequate, For Now
• 2012/01/30: EurActiv: No need for further regulation on shale gas: EU study
  There is no need for more environmental legislation in the case of shale gas exploration, at least until it reaches commercial scale, says a new study published by the European Commission.
• 2012/01/30: PlanetArk: EU Energy Policy May Bring 500,000 Jobs

  Meanwhile in Australia:

• 2012/02/05: JQuiggin: Startling news from the polls
• 2012/02/05: PlanetJ: The conspiracy to capture the Australian media
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au):TDU: Monckton's push for an Australia Fox News
• 2012/01/30: ABC(Au): Developer concerned about sea level predictions
  Lake Macquarie Council's effort to manage the impact of rising sea levels has again raised the ire of developer Jeff McCloy, this time over his plans to develop the former Pasminco smelter site.
• 2012/01/31: Bundanga: Cattle Banned! Finally some protection for Victoria's High Plains [Aus pol]

  After a 10 year drought and recent massive flooding, water usage planning is controversial and difficult:

• 2012/02/05: ABC(Au): Flood inquiry addresses conflict of interest claims
  Queensland's floods inquiry will continue extended hearings today, but in a remarkable development one deputy commissioner will not be there. In the latest development in an extraordinary series of events, the Courier-Mail newspaper claimed deputy commissioner Philip Cummins has a conflict of interest as he plans to work for a company which is currently doing work for dam operator Seqwater. The dam operator has come under question at the inquiry. The story prompted a stinging attack from Commissioner Cate Holmes at yesterday's hearing. She opened the hearings by saying the Courier-Mail story is wrong, explaining Mr Cummins will do work for the consulting company once his role with the commission ends, but it will not involve reviewing the manual. She said the report appears to be a calculated attempt to undermine the commission and its work.
• 2012/02/04: ABC(Au): Flood inquiry hits back at newspaper report
  Queensland's Floods commissioner has attacked a report in today's Courier Mail newspaper, which she says threatens to undermine public confidence in the floods inquiry. Splashed across the front page of the paper are allegations that deputy commissioner Phillip Cummins has a conflict of interest. It suggests Mr Cummins is working for a company engaged to review the Wivenhoe Dam manual, which has been criticised at this week's hearings. Commissioner Cate Holmes opened today's hearings by saying the story is wrong.
• 2012/02/04: ABC(Au): Commission delves further into Wivenhoe Dam before Brisbane floods
• 2012/02/03: ABC(Au): Dam engineers accused of flood report collusion
  Queensland's flood inquiry has heard extraordinary allegations that engineers who controlled Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam during last summer's disaster colluded to hide the truth. The commission is investigating claims the engineers botched water releases, caused unnecessary flooding and misled the inquiry about their actions.
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au): Dam engineer accused of fabricating flood report
  Queensland's floods inquiry has accused a dam engineer of making up a flood report because he was afraid of what people would think. The commission has reopened hearings to examine fresh evidence that Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam was mismanaged during last year's devastating floods. Joe Tibaldi was one of four engineers who managed the dam before Brisbane's major flood and is the principal author of the official account of events at Wivenhoe. The inquiry is investigating claims it has been misled and that Brisbane flooded unnecessarily after insufficient water was released from the dam.
• 2012/02/02: ABC(Au): Queensland floods inquiry resumes hearings

  While in the Indian subcontinent:

• 2012/02/03: CCurrents: Take It or Leave It: Hunger or NFSA?
• 2012/02/03: CCurrents: Thane Cyclone: An Indication For Re-visioning Disaster Management
• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: India Leads World In Green Power Growth For 2011
• 2012/01/31: CCurrents: Anti-Koodankulam Nuclear Plant Agitation Leaders And Women Supporters Attacked
• 2012/01/29: CCurrents: The Anti-Nuclear Movement Wants India To Develop More Sustainably And Equitably: Lalita Ramdas

  And in China:

• 2012/02/03: OpenDem: China's big bet on green industry -- and how it might green the world
  After the failure of Durban, a promising plan B to reducing carbon emissions rests upon green development industrial strategies being pursued by individual countries. And here China is in the vanguard.
• 2012/02/02: PlanetArk: China To Invest In Agriculture Innovation To Boost Food Security

  While in Japan:

• 2012/01/30: BBC: Japan population to shrink by one-third by 2060

  In the Middle East:

• 2012/01/31: TP:JR: Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming "Humanity's Most Pressing Concern"

  And South America:

• 2012/01/30: BBC: Bolivia march revives Tipnis Amazon road dispute
  Hundreds of protesters have arrived in Bolivia's main city, La Paz, to demand the government resume the construction of a controversial road through an Amazon reserve. President Evo Morales cancelled the project last year after a similar protest march by indigenous tribes. They said the road would destroy their rainforest homeland. But other communities say the highway would bring much-needed economic development to the Bolivian Amazon.
• 2012/01/30: AlterNet: Could Ecuador Be the Most Radical and Exciting Place on Earth?

  In Canada, neocon PM Harper madly pursues petroleum while continuing his do-nothing climate policy:

• 2012/01/31: Tyee: Tides Canada: Let's Have Open, Honest Debate about Our Energy Future -- 'The conversation is going downhill when it should be rising to new heights.'
• 2012/01/31: PI:B: Carbon pricing and Canada's New West Partnership: An $8 billion opportunity
• 2012/02/01: Tyee: Eleven Oily Questions for Every MP -- Before you make oil sands and pipeline decisions, can you answer these queries?
• 2012/02/03: BBC: Oil spurs Canada PM Stephen Harper visit to China
• 2012/02/01: PlanetArk: Canada Ethanol Policy Hurts Livestock Farmers: Report
• 2012/02/01: DeSmogBlog: Jim Hoggan Op-Ed in Vancouver Sun: Who Gets A Say In Our Democracy?
• 2012/02/01: 350orBust: Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver Unable To Answer Question re: Hydrocarbons & Climate Change
• 2012/02/01: DawgsBlawg: Eastern Gateway
• 2012/01/31: CBC: More Alberta oil may start flowing east, MPs told
• 2012/02/01: PostMedia: Political battle heats up over energy strategy -- Liberal MP slams silence on greenhouse gases
  Political battle lines are being drawn over a proposed national energy strategy, with industry groups onside and the Conservatives and opposition parties sparring over what it should include. The sensitivity of the issue was laid bare Tuesday at the House of Commons natural resources committee, with the Liberals calling for a national strategy that factors in greenhouse gas emissions and the Conservatives reminding the opposition about how the 1980s National Energy Program devastated the energy sector.
• 2012/01/31: CBC: Retrofit program loss stuns homeowners
• 2012/01/31: PostMedia: Conservative MPs take issue with funding of safe abortion advocate
• 2012/01/31: BCLSB: They Believe

  The G20 controversy lingers:

• 2012/01/30: CBC: SIU closes Nobody investigation
  Ontario's civilian police watchdog will not reopen an investigation into the arrest of a G20 protester after a report said officers used unnecessary force. The Office of the Independent Police Review Director looked into the arrest of Adam Nobody in June 2010 during the summit of world leaders in Toronto.

The Royal Society of Canada reports Canada is failing to protect its marine biodiversity:

• 2012/02/02: PostMedia: Canada's failure to protect marine biodiversity 'disappointing and dismaying,' asserts panel chair
  Canada is failing miserably at protecting its rich marine biodiversity from the looming threat of climate change, an expert-panel report for the Royal Society of Canada concluded Thursday.
• 2012/02/02: Telegram: Report says science, not minister should rule Canada's fisheries
• 2012/02/03: TSRBP: Get politics out of fishery: report
• 2012/02/02: CBC: Canada failing its oceans, biodiversity panel finds
  An expert panel investigating the state of Canadian marine biodiversity has accused the government of failing to protect the country's oceans, leaving marine life threatened and the nation's ocean species at risk. The panel was commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada in 2009 to review the effects of climate change, fishing and aquaculture on the ability of Canada's oceans to sustain and restore marine populations. Announcing the panel's findings in Vancouver on Thursday, Prof. Jeffrey Hutchings said the government had failed to meet national and international commitments to sustain marine biodiversity over many years.
• 2012/02/02: NatureNB: Canada lags on protecting marine biodiversity

  The Tories have written off woodland caribou:

• 2012/01/29: CBC: Alberta First Nation outraged at lack of caribou protection -- Environment minister declined emergency order to protect animal last week
  A First Nation in northern Alberta is outraged because federal Environment Minister Peter Kent recently said he will not issue an emergency protection order for woodland caribou. In some parts of Canada, including Alberta, the mammal is listed as threatened.
• 2012/01/25: CBC: Kent again declines emergency caribou protection order
  Environment Minister Peter Kent has again declined to issue an emergency order to protect woodland caribou -- but this time he's explaining why. "I have reconsidered and I have determined that nationally, the species does not face an imminent threat to survival at this time," Kent told The Canadian Press in an interview late Wednesday afternoon from Kamloops, B.C. Last July, Federal Court Justice Peter Crampton ordered Kent to revisit his decision not to issue an emergency order to protect caribou, which face extirpation from large parts of their range, especially in Alberta's oilsands region.

The battle over the Northern Gateway pipeline rages on:

• 2012/02/04: PostMedia: Defenceless
  Canada has no idea what foreign activity is detrimental to its national security interests, much less how to stop it, writes Terry Glavin.
  'We are sitting ducks."
  That's the way Anthony Campbell, the former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat of the Privy Council Office, put it to me the other day. We were talking about Beijing's designs on Canada's energy resources, Beijing's adroit cunning in enfeebling Canadian foreign policy, and how Canadians have been rendered unable to cope with the drama as it unfolds.
• 2012/02/04: P&E: Gateway is Certainly in Sinopec's Interests. It is in No way in Canada's National Interests
• 2012/02/04: PostMedia: Crowds pack Prince Rupert's streets to protest Northern Gateway pipeline
  Close to a thousand people marched through Prince Rupert's streets today as part of a rally hosted by local first nations against Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and the oil tanker traffic it would generate on British Columbia's northern coast.
• 2012/02/04: CBC: Hundreds rally against Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline
  First Nation, opponents shut down main street in Prince Rupert, B.C.
• 2012/02/02: Tyee: Economist Calls Gateway Pipeline an Inflationary 'Threat' -- Former CEO of ICBC concludes project 'is neither needed nor in public interest.'
• 2012/02/03: TRM: Oh, Those 'Radicals'!
• 2012/01/31: Tyee: Market for Enbridge's Gateway Pipeline Remains Murky
  Foreign interests gave millions to help prime the project, but years later there are no known binding commitments by customers.
• 2012/02/04: Rabble:B: Visiting when arrows were flying: Dakelh people protest Enbridge pipeline
• 2012/02/03: Rabble:B: The #EnemyGate scandal by Andrew Frank
• 2012/02/03: PlanetArk: Canada Plan To Sell Oil To China Faces Big Hurdles
• 2012/02/02: CBC: Northern Gateway would hurt economy, study says -- Pipeline project would boost price of oil in Canada
• 2012/02/02: CBC: Reverse Enbridge oil pipeline, urge Suncor, union -- Line 9 currently brings crude to Ontario from overseas
  The idea of more Western Canadian oil flowing east found backing from Canada's biggest energy company and one of the country's largest unions at the Natural Resources Committee hearings Thursday.
• 2012/02/02: BCLSB: Pipelines To Drive Up Gas Prices
• 2012/02/02: Postmedia: Report says Northern Gateway pipeline will create 'price shock' across Canada
  Former ICBC boss says predicted rise in cost of oil serious risk to economy A new report says the Northern Gateway pipeline will boost crude oil prices $2 to $3 per barrel annually over the next 30 years, causing significant damage to consumers, businesses and the Canadian economy. The economic assessment of the $5.5-billion project by former Insurance Corporation of British Columbia CEO Robyn Allan says the price shock will have "a negative and prolonged impact on the Canadian economy by reducing output, employment labour income and government revenues."
• 2012/02/01: EnergyBulletin: Enemies of the State
• 2012/01/31: DeepClimate: Joe Oliver recycles debunked EthicalOil.org talking points on oilsands emissions, refuses to accept climate science
• 2012/02/01: CEP: Gateway pipeline unsustainable, energy union tells NEB
• 2012/02/01: PostMedia: Sherman slams Rae over pipeline
  Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman is slamming federal counterpart Bob Rae for failing to support the Northern Gateway pipeline project.
• 2012/02/01: WpgFP: Fired environmentalist sees conspiracy [Frank]
• 2012/01/31: BCLSB: Another Shoe Drops In Northern Gateway Debate
• 2012/01/31: PostMedia: PM headed for conflict with First Nations over pipeline, Rae warns -- Court spells out need to consult
  Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday his government recognizes and will honour its constitutional obligation to consult with First Nations on the Northern Gateway pipeline linking the Alberta oilsands to Asian markets via the northern B.C. coast. But a government official said the main tool for those consultations will be the National Energy Board hearings, which Liberal interim leader Bob Rae said may be inadequate.
• 2012/01/30: 350orBust: Gerald Amos Of Haisla First Nation To Harper and Oliver: No Apology Forthcoming
• 2012/01/30: Tyee: How First Nations Are Gearing Up for Legal Battle Against Gateway -- Native groups likely to cite evidence they weren't consulted as required by Supreme Court decisions

  Alberta & the feds are setting up a joint tarsands monitoring system:

• 2012/02/03: Hullabaloos: Monitoring the Oil Sands
• 2012/02/03: CBC: Alberta, Canada launch joint oilsands monitoring system
  Monthly water testing is part of a new "world class" federal-provincial environmental monitoring plan for the Alberta oilsands announced Friday in Edmonton. The plan, which seeks to improve and increase the monitoring of water, air and habitat in the oilsands, will cost about $50 million a year to implement in its first three years, with industry picking up the cost. Management of the new system will be shared by the federal and Alberta governments.
• 2012/02/03: AlbertaGov: Canada and Alberta take action to implement world class monitoring system for the oil sands
• 2012/02/03: PI: Pembina reacts to new joint oilsands monitoring plan
• 2012/02/02: CBC: Oilsands monitoring plan [to be] announced Friday
  Details of a new environmental monitoring system for the Alberta oilsands will be announced in Edmonton Friday by federal Environment Minister Peter Kent and his provincial counterpart, Diana McQueen. The plan comes after panels appointed separately by the federal and provincial governments concluded that the existing, industry funded system was inadequate.

The ISA virus in BC waters is potentially disastrous:

• 2012/02/01: TheCanadian: Willful Blindness and Sick Salmon - Lessons from Cohen Commission
• 2012/01/30: AlexandraMorton: Fishing lodges step up to help pay Don Staniford legal costs
• 2012/01/30: AlexandraMorton: Reporting on the trial of Don Staniford vs Mainstream, by Elena Edwards

  In BC, the stage is set. Now what will Clark and Dix do?

• 2012/02/03: CBC: B.C. premier plans liquefied natural gas exports
• 2012/02/03: PI: Pembina reacts to the release of British Columbia's Natural Gas Strategy
• 2012/02/03: Tyee: Proof Is in: Our Forests Are Badly Mismanaged
  BC falls seriously short on restocking trees, finds Forest Practices Board. Time for action.
• 2012/02/02: CBC: PetroChina buys 20% of B.C. Shell gas play
  PetroChina Co. has agreed to buy a 20 per cent stake in Shell Oil's Groundbirch shale gas project in northeastern B.C.
• 2012/02/02: LFR: Adrian Dix overtakes Christy Clark as BC's most popular choice for premier

  Meanwhile in that Mechanical Mordor known as the tar sands:

• 2012/02/03: CBC: Imperial Oil approves $2B expansion at Cold Lake oilsands
  Calgary-based Imperial Oil Ltd. says it will go ahead with a $2-billion expansion of Cold Lake oilsands operation in northeastern Alberta. The expansion, to be known as the "Nabiye" project, will add 40,000 barrels per day of bitumen production when it starts up by end of 2014 -- 25 per cent boost in production.
• 2012/01/30: TStar: Covering the oilsands
• 2012/01/30: PostMedia: Keep jobs in Canada: Build refineries for oilsands
  Political codswallop and flak-flavoured red herrings now litter the debate over pipelines to carry bitumen from Alberta's oilsands to markets in the United States and Asia. Can we please have some mature discussion? That would involve calm and intelligent cost-benefit analysis based on science and reason rather than emotive sloganeering and clownish "talking points." Yes, that assessment must include climate change and whether exporting carbon emissions to another jurisdiction represents moral hazard on the part of the exporter. Yes, we do need objective environ-mental risk analysis without vested interest.

Also in Alberta:

• 2012/02/01: PI:B: Helping Calgary meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets

  In Saskatchewan the question is once again Potash:

• 2012/01/31: CBC: Potash mining debate heats up in Saskatchewan town -- Economic prosperity pitted against long-term impact in Kronau

  In the Maritimes:

• 2012/02/01: CBC: Muskrat gets conditional backing in Manitoba review
  An external review has come out in favour of the controversial Muskrat Falls hydro project, although the finding comes attached with a basket full of conditions and provisos. Manitoba Hydro delivered its review of the plan to tap power at Muskrat Falls on Labrador's Churchill River, and then move the power to Newfoundland. It was asked to determine whether the plan was cheaper or more expensive than generating power on the island through other means.

In the North:

• 2012/01/30: NatureNB: Engine trouble scuttles plans for Arctic research expedition
  Canada's Arctic research vessel the CCGS Amundsen has been put out of action while it awaits engine repairs, forcing researchers to cancel the ship's research programme for 2012.

As for miscellaneous Canadiana:

• 2012/01/30: CBC: Industry sets fracking guidelines for shale gas extraction -- Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers released recommendations Monday
  Members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers who practise hydraulic fracturing will have to disclose how much water is being used and what it's being used for, according to new operating guidelines released Monday by the organization.
  [...]
  There will also be public disclosure of the types of chemicals being used, though Collyer admits companies may not be legally required to provide details about how they combine those chemicals.

The movement toward a long term ecologically viable economics is glacial:

• 2012/02/03: EnergyBulletin: Beyond the Bubble Economy
• 2012/02/03: CCurrents: The Fallacy Of The Tragedy Of The Commons
• 2012/02/03: CCurrents: Toward An Economy Of Earth
• 2012/02/03: OpenDem: Is there such a thing as ethical capitalism?
  In response to a growing realisation that neo-liberal capitalism is morally and literally bankrupt, Britain's political leadership have provided three visions of ethical capitalism for us to aspire to. So, is there such a thing as ethical capitalism? And why is this question being asked now?
• 2012/02/02: EnergyBulletin: Open-market sustainability
• 2012/01/31: EnergyBulletin: More reasons why we are reaching limits to growth
• 2012/01/30: EnergyBulletin: Beyond GDP: New measures for a new economy (report)
• 2012/01/30: EnergyBulletin: The fallacy of the tragedy of the commons

  IPAT [Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology] raised its head once again. See also :

• 2012/01/31: TMoS: I'll Get On To That Right Away
• 2012/01/29: AlterNet: Why New Birth Control Benefits are the Right Choice and Why Religious Conservatives Have it Wrong

  Apocalypso anyone?

• 2012/02/03: GEB: How much time is there left to act?
  How much time is there left to act, before methane hydrate releases will lead to human extinction?
• 2012/01/31: CCurrents: Human Family's Ecocidal Death Wish
• 2012/01/30: SciAm:Obs: Climate Change Has Helped Bring Down Cultures

  How do the media measure up?

• 2012/02/04: S&R: The Komen "reversal": a crushing failure of America's newsrooms
• 2012/02/04: ClassM: Calling it like it is
• 2012/02/04: TP:JR: Apparently Unaware of Global Warming, L.A. Times Remains "Perplexed by the Mild Weather Across the U.S."
• 2012/02/05: PlanetJ: The conspiracy to capture the Australian media
• 2012/02/02: BRitholtz: The Ongoing "Foxification" of the Wall Street Journal
• 2012/02/01: KSJT: NYTimes drops climate news service? Yale Climate Forum says so and more; James Hansen gives media a raspberry
• 2012/02/01: Grist: The Wall Street Journal's willful climate lies
• 2012/02/01: DeSmogBlog: Fox News Versus The Muppets: Do Conservatives Have Different Senses of Humor Than Liberals?
• 2012/01/31: DeSmogBlog: Monckton Pitches 'Fox News Australia' Idea To Mining Magnate, Seeks 'Super-Rich' Backers
• 2012/01/31: TP:JR: L.A. Times Explains U.S. 'Seems to Have Largely Escaped Winter.' Failure to Mention Global Warming Is 'Journalistic Malpractice'
• 2012/02/01: WtD: Herald Sun War on Science No.10 : The one where Andrew Bolt gets his "science" from discredited hacks at the UKs Daily Mail
• 2012/01/30: WtD: Herald Sun War on Science: manipulating graphs to "hide" global warming
• 2012/01/30: KSJT: Wall Street Journal: No need for global warming panic ; Daily Mail: Forget global warming ; James Hansen : Don't forget, and get busy.
• 2012/01/30: TP:JR: Daily Mail Slammed for Ignoring Scientific Truth We're Still Warming and Human Emissions Will Dwarf Any Solar Changes
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: Tiresome Climate Misinformation In Wall Street Journal & Daily Mail Debunked
• 2012/01/27: UCSUSA: Dismal Science at the Wall Street Journal
• 2012/01/30: Grist: WSJ will publish literally anything, as long as it disputes global warming

  Here is something for your library:

• 2012/02/04: QuarkSoup: Learning to Say Hectopascal
• 2012/02/01: APSmith: [Book Review] _The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars_ by Michael Mann
• 2011//: PrincetonPress: [Book Site] Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science by Michael Nielsen

  And for your film & video enjoyment:

• 2012/02/05: CCP: Exonerated climate science professor, Michael Mann, speaks about the attacks on his work and reputation and their effect on his life and work
• 2012/02/03: TCoE: Uncle Carl speaks to all of us
• 2012/02/03: Tamino: New Video Series
• 2012/02/01: Salon: Wind power: Renewable resource, or another corporate scam?
• 2012/02/01: WtD: The war for the North part 2: must see video showing how the deniers hope to capture the media high ground
• 2012/01/31: SciAm:AA: Proteus: How Radiolarians Saved Ernst Haeckel
• 2012/01/31: HotTopic: Water is rising

  Developing a new energy infrastructure is a fundamental challenge of the current generation:

• 2012/02/04: HotTopic: Uncomfortable parallels [energy-slavery]
• 2012/02/03: OilDrum: The 2012 BP Energy Outlook 2030
• 2012/02/01: BBerg: U.S. Clean Technology Venture Funding Declines 4.5% in 2011
• 2012/01/20: Wired: Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: Clean Energy Records Shattered in 2011: $53 Billion in New Deals, $260 Billion in Investment
• 2012/01/30: KSJT: New Scientist : How long before green energy becomes just energy source to be capped?
• 2012/01/27: G&M: Switch off the lights, here comes the sun -- piping sunlight into buildings

  Hey! Let's contaminate the aquifer for thousands of years! It'll be a fracking gas!

• 2012/02/02: GRC: "Hydrauliic Fracturing": Poland Gives Green Light to Massive Fracking Efforts
• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: States Increasingly Concerned Over Fracking Wastewater, But Limited In What They Can Do
• 2012/02/04: BBC: Anti-fracking demo in Enniskillen
  About 100 people have gathered in Enniskillen to demonstrate against the use of fracking to extract gas from shale rock in County Fermanagh.
• 2012/02/02: DeSmogBlog: Congressional 'Scientific Integrity' Hearing On Fracking In WY Is Quite Lacking In Scientists
• 2012/02/01: BWeek: Ohio Tries to Escape Fate as a Dumping Ground for Fracking Fluid
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: Natural Gas: The Signs They Are A-Changin' In New York
• 2012/01/30: CBC: Industry sets fracking guidelines for shale gas extraction -- Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers released recommendations Monday
  Members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers who practise hydraulic fracturing will have to disclose how much water is being used and what it's being used for, according to new operating guidelines released Monday by the organization.
  [...]
  There will also be public disclosure of the types of chemicals being used, though Collyer admits companies may not be legally required to provide details about how they combine those chemicals.
• 2012/01/28: TreeHugger: Six Questions About Fracking Only An 'Ecofascist Industry Tool' Would Ask
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: There's Much Less Shale Gas Available in US Than Previously Thought
• 2012/01/29: NYT: New Report by Agency Lowers Estimates of Natural Gas in U.S.
  Just how much natural gas is trapped underground in the United States? The difficulty and uncertainty in predicting natural gas resources was underscored last week when the Energy Information Administration released a report containing sharply lower estimates.
• 2012/01/29: DeSmogBlog: New York Looks To Local Bans On Fracking

  On the coal front:

• 2012/02/01: TP:JR: Coal on the Ropes: In One Week, 4,099 MW of U.S. Coal Plants Are Set to Close or Hung Up in Court

  On the gas and oil front:

• 2012/02/03: BBerg: Closing oil prices Friday
  OIL (US$/bbl)
  Nymex Crude Future....97.84
  Dated Brent Spot.....114.28
  WTI Cushing Spot......97.84
• 2012/02/03: Guardian(UK): Once, men abused slaves. Now we abuse fossil fuels
• 2012/02/03: DeSmogBlog: Warren Buffett Exposed: The Oracle of Omaha and the Tar Sands
• 2012/02/04: PSinclair: Enjoying the Modern Convenience of Fossil Fuels in the Third World
• 2012/01/31: CER:RRapier: Refinery Closures Lead to Rising Gas Prices and Job Losses
• 2012/02/04: Yahoo:AFP: Gazprom 'unable to pump extra gas to Europe'
• 2012/02/03: BBC: Uganda and Tullow sign deal to start oil production
  Uganda's government has signed production agreements with the London-based company Tullow oil. The deals pave the way for a $10bn (£6bn) investment in a refinery and crude oil export pipeline. Tullow will sell two-thirds of its interest in the Lake Albert Rift Basin to a Chinese company, CNOOC and the French firm, Total.
• 2012/02/05: OilDrum: Tech Talk - the oil and natural gas in Eastern Siberia
• 2012/02/02: BBC: Cuba oil: Offshore exploration brings hopes and fears
  Some 50km (31 miles) off the northern coast of Cuba workers have begun drilling deep beneath the waves, exploring for oil reserves that could transform the island's future. The Scarabeo 9 oil rig had to be brought half way around the world to bypass the five-decade-long US trade embargo on Cuba.
• 2012/02/01: EurActiv: Cold snap reduces Russian gas supplies
  Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has restricted supplies to Europe, its largest foreign market, to cover an increase in domestic demand caused by a cold snap.
• 2012/02/01: EUO: Russia cuts EU gas, blames cold weather
• 2012/01/29: Gregor: Global Oil Production Update: A Strange Future Has Arrived
• 2012/02/01: CBC: Suncor restarts Libyan oil output -- $1.4 billion in fourth quarter profits
• 2012/01/29: SciAm:PI: North America Losing Its Oil Edge
• 2012/01/26: Forbes: The End of Elastic Oil

  In the fossil fuel corps:

• 2012/02/02: TP:JR: Shell Produces Less Oil, But 2011 Profits Soar 54% to $31 Billion
• 2012/02/02: BBC: Shell plans production expansion as profits rise
  Royal Dutch Shell has said it will launch a major investment drive in an effort to boost falling production. The oil giant said it would spend $30bn (£19.4bn) on new oil and gas projects this year, compared with $24bn in 2011. The announcement came as Shell reported a rise in profits even as production fell, thanks to higher oil prices. For the final three months of 2011 net income was $6.5bn, up from $5.7bn a year earlier. For the full year, net income was up more than 50% to $28.6bn.
• 2012/01/31: BBC: Exxon profits rise on oil prices
  The the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil, has seen its profits rise due to the higher oil price, despite producing less oil. The oil giant said net profits for the three months to the end of December were up 2% on the same period last year to $9.4bn (£6.1bn).
• 2012/01/31: TP:JR: ExxonMobil Makes $41 Billion, But Pays Estimated 17.6% Tax Rate, Lower Than Most Taxpayers (But Not Romney)
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: Despite $41 Billion in Profits Last Year, Exxon Pays a Lower Tax Rate Than You

  Yes we have a peak oil sighting:

• 2012/01/29: FuturePundit: 2005 Seen As Oil Supply Tipping Point
• 2012/02/03: DVoice: Will Peak Oil Spell the End of Capitalism?
• 2012/02/01: MacroBiz: Peak oil and growth
• 2012/02/01: G&M: Our peak oil premium
• 2012/01/30: EnergyBulletin: Commentary: Peak Oil: Yes, still a serious issue

  Biofuel bickering abounds:

• 2012/01/31: TMoS: Now Can the World Have Its Forests Back?

  The answer my friend...:

• 2012/02/02: EUO: Wind Energy
• 2012/02/02: EUO: Wind energy: Good or bad?
• 2012/02/02: TP:JR: Offshore Wind One Step Closer to Reality in the Mid-Atlantic
• 2012/02/02: HotTopic: We'll surpass government forecast says wind energy association
• 2012/02/01: TreeHugger: 5% of California Now Powered by Wind
• 2012/01/30: SunTimes: Illinois tops nation in new wind turbines

  Meanwhile among the solar aficionados:

• 2012/02/02: EUO: Sahara wind and sun to power EU homes
• 2012/02/01: PlanetArk: Canadian Solar Seeing Spike In European Demand
• 2012/02/02: Eureka: UT biosolar breakthrough promises cheap, easy green electricity
• 2012/01/31: TreeHugger: Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Installs Solar Panels on His Roof, Beats White House to the Punch
• 2012/02/01: OilDrum: Basking in the Sun
• 2012/02/01: Reuters: Falling solar prices good for climate, bad for firms
  There is a bright side to the plunge in solar panel prices that has brought down some U.S. and German manufacturers which relied too heavily on subsidies for green energy - solar power costs have fallen faster than anyone thought possible.
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: It's Official: Solar Modules Count As E-Waste

  The nuclear energy controversy continues:

• 2012/02/03: WNN: Is there life after sixty?
  A new research program headed by the US Department of Energy will begin to investigate the case for reactor lifespans of greater than 60 years.
• 2012/02/03: EneNews: Group of women attacked while protesting nuclear plant [in India] - Pulled out of vehicle and assaulted - 10 people in custody
• 2012/02/01: PlanetArk: NRC Wants U.S. Nuclear Operators To Adopt New Seismic Model
• 2012/02/01: UCSUSA: NRC Releases Draft Report on Simulated Accident at Surry Plant in Virginia and Peach Bottom Plant in Pennsylvania
• 2012/02/02: WNN: Low risk from major accident consequences
  A severe accident at a US nuclear power plant would not be likely to cause any immediate deaths, while the risks of fatal cancers caused by such an accident would be millions of times lower than the general risks of dying of cancer, a long-running research study has found. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) launched the State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA) research project in 2007, and a draft report has now been completed and opened to public comment.
• 2012/02/01: EneNews: AP: Many tubes found damaged at San Diego-area nuke plant -- "Unusual" says NRC -- Cause unknown -- Radiation could have escaped... Developing
• 2012/01/20: AlterNet: Why a Likely Natural Event Could Cause Nuclear Reactors to Melt Down and Our Grid to Crash
• 2012/01/29: CCurrents: The Anti-Nuclear Movement Wants India To Develop More Sustainably And Equitably: Lalita Ramdas
• 2012/01/31: WNN: Extending operating lives of French reactors best option
  Investing in new nuclear generating capacity or any other form of energy would be too expensive and come online too late, France's state audit office has concluded. Extending the operating lives of its existing nuclear power reactors would be its best option.
• 2012/01/31: NBF: Chinese, Indian and Ukrainian nuclear power generation
• 2012/01/30: WNN: Russia commissions fuel storage facility
  Russia will soon start storing used fuel from its RBMK-1000 and VVER-1000 reactors in a new centralized 'dry' interim storage facility (ISF) at Zheleznogorsk. The first phase of the facility was recently completed and the first RBMK fuel will shortly be delivered.

Nuclear fusion projects around the world limp along:

• 2012/02/03: CCurrents: Nuclear Fusion
• 2012/02/01: NBF: Cold Fusion with over ten times energy gain was demonstrated at MIT
• 2012/02/01: NBF: Defkalion releases video of Hyperion Cold Fusion Device test and an online Project to send testers to Defkalion
• 2012/02/01: EnergyBulletin: Nuclear Fusion

  Like a mirage, the dream of a Hydrogen Economy shimmers on the horizon:

• 2012/02/03: CCurrents: The Hydrogen Dream
• 2012/01/30: OilDrum: The Hydrogen Dream

  More people are talking about the electrical grid:

• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: PG&E Customers Can Say No to Smart Meters, But at a Price
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: Opponents of Smart Meters Fall Short on Effort to Ban Installations In Illinois Town

  And then there is the matter of efficiency & conservation:

• 2012/01/31: Grist: Does the rebound effect matter for policy?
• 2012/01/30: Grist: What's the deal with the 'rebound effect'?
• 2012/02/01: Eureka: Building a better light bulb

  Automakers & lawyers, engineers & activists argue over the future of the car:

• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: Phase One of UK's Nationwide Electric Car Charging Network Complete
• 2012/02/03: AutoBG: Who was for, who was against CARB's ZEV mandate "over-compliance" rule
• 2012/02/03: PlanetArk: Under The Hood: GM Blueprint For Volt 2.0
• 2012/02/02: PlanetArk: Insight: Oil Industry Sees No Threat From Electric Car
• 2012/02/01: NBF: Wireless power that is 97 percent efficient could revolutionize highway transportation
• 2012/02/02: BBC: Japan carmakers' sales in US rise led by Toyota's Camry
  Japanese carmakers have reported a jump in their US sales boosted by new models and the restoration of supply chains. Toyota Motors saw its sales increase by 7.5% in January from a year earlier, helped largely by a 56% surge in sales of the new Camry. Honda Motors reported a 9% jump, while Nissan's sales rose by more than 10%.
• 2012/01/30: AutoBG: Bob Lutz: Hey right-wingers, stop attacking the Chevy Volt
• 2012/01/30: TP:JR: Will California Be the New Clean Car Capital of the World?
• 2012/01/30: AutoBG: GM testing OnStar feature to boost renewable-energy charging in Chevy Volt

  As for Energy Storage:

• 2012/01/31: TP:JR: Super Hot Salt: A Super Cool Solar Energy Storage Technology Innovation

  Insurance and re-insurance companies are feeling the heat:

• 2012/02/02: Grist: Risky business: States require insurers to plan for climate change
• 2012/02/03: TreeHugger: Climate Impact: Will Global Insurance Industry Be The Next Financial Bubble To Pop?
• 2012/02/01: NYT: Three States to Require Insurers to Disclose Climate-Change Response Plans
  Insurance commissioners in California, New York and Washington State will require that companies disclose how they intend to respond to the risks their businesses and customers face from increasingly severe storms and wildfires, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change, California's commissioner said Wednesday. Up until this point, those states required about a third of larger insurers to turn over the information in a survey; for all others it was voluntary.

Joe Romm posts a daily list of top energy and climate stories:

• 2012/02/03: TP:JR: February 3 News...
• 2012/02/02: TP:JR: February 2 News...
• 2012/02/01: TP:JR: February 1 News...
• 2012/01/31: TP:JR: January 31 News...
• 2012/01/30: TP:JR: January 30 News...

  Other (weekly) lists:

• 2012/02/03: EnergyBulletin: ODAC Newsletter
• 2012/02/02: GLaden: Global Warming Battles On The Blogs
• 2012/01/30: TreeHugger: Energy News Recap...

  The carbon lobby are up to the usual:

• 2012/02/03: CCP: Brad Johnson: Bituminous Coal Operators' Association's CSM/SEAPAC attacking and slandering Michael Mann with vicious web campaign
• 2012/02/03: Guardian(UK): Penn State defies Facebook campaign calling for it to drop climate lecture
  University cites its First Amendment commitment in supporting its climate scientist Michael Mann's right to give lecture
• 2012/01/31: Telegraph(UK): Sir David Attenborough hits back at Lord Lawson over Frozen Planet climate change row
  Sir David Attenborough has accused Lord Lawson of "unacceptable" selective use of evidence in trying to deny the impacts of global warming.
• 2012/02/02: QuarkSoup: Climate Scientists in Good Company
• 2012/02/02: DM:BA: A case study of the tactics of climate change denial, in which I am the target
• 2012/02/01: WtD: The war for the North part 2: must see video showing how the deniers hope to capture the media high ground
• 2012/02/01: Tamino: William M. Briggs: Numerologist to the Stars
• 2012/01/31: ABC(Au): Climate change sceptics to address public meeting
  Developer Jeff McCloy is turning up the heat on Lake Macquarie Council over its sea level rise policy, by calling a public meeting at Belmont tonight
• 2012/01/27: MediaMatters: Conservative Media Recklessly Distort Volt Safety
• 2012/01/30: DM:BA: While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower
• 2012/01/30: UCSUSA: Contrarians Misrepresent U.K. Weather Service Research to Push Cooling Claims
• 2012/01/30: DeSmogBlog: In Which Climate "Skeptics" Drop the Lysenko Bomb. No, I'm Not Kidding...
• 2012/01/29: QuarkSoup: The Cheesiness of John Stossel (No, not his Mustache)
• 2012/01/29: QuarkSoup: The ATI's Outrageous Spin of the Mann Emails

  As for climate miscellanea:

• 2012/02/02: SciAm:GB: Tsunami Debris and North America: Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?
• 2012/01/31: P3: The Dily Mile
• 2012/02/01: QuarkSoup: Peter Gleick's Delinquent Thoughts on Uncertainty
• 2012/02/01: ERabett: Ms. Affiliation
• 2012/01/31: ABC(Au): Learn from climate history: epidemiologist
• 2012/02/01: UCSUSA: 16 Year Old Girl Scouts Fighting for Deforestation-Free Cookies Up for Major United Nations Award
• 2012/01/31: ClimateSight: How much is most?
• 2012/01/30: P3: Six Ways from Sunday
• 2012/01/30: Grist: Our waste heat warms the atmosphere, too -- and it's getting worse
• 2012/01/30: NBF: An Affluent earth based civilization with all clean energy would still warm the planet by 3 degrees celsius

  And here are a couple of sites you may find interesting and/or useful:

• Climate Front Lines - A global forum for indigenous peoples, small islands and vulnerable communities
• UCAR: Understanding atmosphere, Earth, and Sun & NCAR Staff Notes
• BOM: Southwest Queensland Rivers Rainfall and River Conditions
• Retraction Watch
• US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Wiki: Knightian uncertainty
• UN High Level Panel on Global Sustainability
• Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Global Sustainability
• Rutgers: Northern Hemisphere Satellite
• Wiki: FFF - Fuck for Forest
• The Blackboard -- Where Climate Talk Gets Hot!
• SORCE: Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment
• USDA: SNAP - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
• Forest Ethics
• Wiki: EMergy
• Wiki: Exergy
• DNN: Disaster News Network

My first novel Water was published in Canada May, 2007. The American release was in October. An Introductionto the novel is available, along with the Unpublished Forewordand the Launch Talk(which includes some quotations), An overview of my writing is available here.

P.S. Recent postings can be found in the week archive and the ancient postings can be accessed here, which should open to this.

"The climate crisis, in reality, is a struggle for the soul of America. It is about whether or not we are still capable -- given the ill health of our democracy and the current dominance of wealth over reason -- of perceiving important and complex realities clearly enough to promote and protect the sustainable well-being of the many. What hangs in the balance is the future of civilization as we know it." -Al Gore

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