Individual and Community

(NewsTarget) The stance of the Bush administration is that global warming does not have an effect on the world environment, but on Dec. 28, the administration agreed that protection was needed for polar bears, whose habitat is in peril from rapidly melting Arctic sea ice.

“Polar bears are one of nature’s ultimate survivors, able to live and thrive in one of the world’s harshest environments,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne in a news release. “But we are concerned the polar bears’ habitat may literally be melting.” Kempthorne also said polar bears should be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
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Scientists predict 2007 will be hottest year yet
By Raphael G. Satter
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON – Deepening drought in Australia. Stronger typhoons in Asia. Floods in Latin America.

British climate scientists predict that a resurgent El Niño climate trend combined with higher levels of greenhouse gases could touch off a fresh round of ecological disasters — and make 2007 the world’s hottest year on record.

There is a 60 percent chance that the average global temperature for 2007 will match or break the record, Britain’s Meteorological Office said Thursday. The consequences of the high temperatures could be felt worldwide.

“Even a moderate (El Niño) warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top,” said Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research unit at the University of East Anglia.

The warmest year on record is 1998, when the average global temperature was 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average of 57 degrees. Though such a change appears small, incremental differences can, for example, add to the ferocity of storms by evaporating more steam off the ocean.

There is a 60 percent chance that the average global temperature for 2007 will match or break the record, Britain’s Meteorological Office said Thursday. The consequences of the high temperatures could be felt worldwide.

complete article at: http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/16398056.htm

ExxonMobil Accused of Using Big Tobacco Tactics on Global Warming

WASHINGTON, DC, January 5, 2007 (ENS) – ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue, the Union of Concerned Scientists claims in a new report published Wednesday.

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded corporation, responded Thursday by calling the Union of Concerned Scientists’ paper “deeply offensive and wrong.”

Tillerson
Rex Tillerson is chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil.
“ExxonMobil engages in public policy discussions by encouraging serious inquiry, analysis, the sharing of information and transparency,” the company said in a statement.

According to the report, between 1998 and 2005 ExxonMobil “directed nearly $16 million to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.”

“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a 200,000 member organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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