Gore: Award Puts focus on Global Warming

"He spent decades trying to get the world to listen and believe as he did that global warming would destroy the planet unless people changed their behavior, and fast. But after former Vice President Al Gore and a host of climate scientists were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their warnings, Gore took only the briefest of bows on a live world stage. He avoided the issue of a U.S. presidential run to "get back to business" on "a planetary emergency."

"For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and the recognition from this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency," Gore said at the offices of the Alliance For Climate Protection, a nonprofit he founded last year to engage citizens in solving the problem.

Gore shared the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists. The scientific panel has explained the dry details of global warming in thousands of pages of footnoted reports every six years or so since 1990.

Gore, fresh from a near miss at winning the U.S. presidency in 2000, translated the numbers and jargon-laden reports into something people could understand. He made a slide show and went Hollywood. His documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won two Academy Awards and has been credited with changing the debate in America about global warming.

"When he first started really working on the climate change issue, I remember he was ridiculed in the press and certainly by political opponents as some kind of kook out there in la-la land," said federal climate scientist Tom Peterson, an IPCC co-author. "It's delightful that he's sharing this and he deserves it well. And it's nice to have his work being vindicated."

If he felt any sense of triumph over the political and scientific critics who belittled or ignored his message, Gore did not betray it during his only public appearance Friday. He learned of his award at 2 a.m. while watching the live TV announcement — hearing his name amid the Norwegian — at his apartment in San Francisco.

Nine hours later, his tone was somber and his remarks brief. With his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford University climate scientists who were co-authors of the international climate report at his side, he referenced a recent report that concluded the ice caps at the North Pole are melting faster than previously thought and could be gone in 23 years without dramatic action.

Gore said he planned to donate his share of the $1.5 million prize to the nonprofit alliance he chairs." |Read more|

Gore's Nobel Peace Prize intensifies Global Warming debate

Al Gore shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations for his efforts to make global warming a pressing global issue.

Within hours of the announcement, pundits across the country were debating whether Gore deserved the award and whether global warming is really the threat the former vice president says it is.

Gore is the first American to win the coveted international honor since Jimmy Carter in 2002.

Gore says the bottom line is, "We face a true planetary emergency."

He says it is not a political issue, but rather a "moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

Critics, however, question whether global warming is a threat to the planet, or just part of a continuing cycle of climate change.

They also question whether, as Gore says, man is the cause of the rise in global temperatures.

Gore says he'll donate his share of the $1.5 million award that goes with the prize to a non-profit alliance devoted to spreading the message about the urgency of the climate crisis.

Prince Urges Bold Global Warming Action

by: Associated Press

"Prince Charles told U.S. lawmakers in a letter Wednesday that the challenges of global warming require a "coordinated response, based on actions across every sector of society."

Charles, who has been praised by environmentalists for his call to action on climate change, said in a letter to Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., that the corporate sector was playing a key role in creating "a political space in which effective policies can be introduced and global progress can be achieved."

Members of the United Kingdom's Corporate Leaders Group were appearing before Markey's House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on Wednesday.

Charles wrote that the corporate group was "crucial in demonstrating that tackling climate change is the way to ensure economic security for the longer term and that it can be done in a way that does not limit the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries."

"To secure the future for generations to follow, I hope that the boldest possible targets can be set, together with policies needed to implement them — otherwise how can we expect developing countries, such as India and China, to take action?" Charles wrote.

Markey's panel was created by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to study and offer recommendations on how to deal with global warming."

Global Warming driving up humidity levels

"Man-made global warming is driving up humidity levels, with the risk that rainfall patterns will shift or strengthen, tropical storms intensify and human health may suffer from heat stress, a study released on Wednesday said.

From 1976 to 2004, when the world's average surface temperature rose 0.49 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit), global levels of atmospheric water vapour rose 2.2 percent, according to the paper by British scientists.

By 2100, humidity levels could increase by another 10 percent, lead researcher Nathan Gillett of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, eastern England, told AFP.

Previously, scientists had noted an increase in humidity over the past few decades as higher temperatures sucked more water from the land and ocean surface.

But it was unclear whether these changes were the result of a natural or a human impact on the climate, as the data was regional rather than global and different methods were used to make the calculations.

The new paper is based on a new set of observations of humidity levels. This data was then crunched through a powerful computer model of Earth's climate system in the late 20th century." |Read more|

Global Warming: Bad news for Gnus

"The annual wildebeest migration is one of nature's most spectacular photo-ops. More than a million wildebeest — also known as gnus — crossing from the Serengeti in Tanzania to Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve and then back again in the search of fresh grass makes for some dramatic action shots, as massive herds travel across the plains before plunging into the Mara River to swim to greener pastures.


The photos from this year's migration are just as dramatic, but for a different reason. This time, piles of wildebeest carcasses line the riverbanks, after 10,000 of the animals drowned trying to cross the Mara at the start of their journey back east to the Serengeti. The deaths are natural: each year, crocodiles and the strong current claim some victims. The numbers, though, are bizarre. The migration rarely leaves more than a few thousand dead; but this year, an estimated 10,000, or about 1% of the wildebeest population, were wiped out. Conservationists say the wildebeest simply chose the wrong point to cross the river, one where the bank on the other side was too steep to climb. As those in the front drowned, they trapped those behind them.

Nature can be cruel, but sometimes it gets some help. The Mara River was especially high this year, after the heavy rains that flooded parts of Africa, killing hundreds of people and uprooting thousands more. Climatologists are pointing to the downpours as proof that predictions that Africa will suffer the most from global warming and climate change are already coming true. The human toll is what makes all the headlines, but the consequences for Africa's wildlife is just as drastic." |Read more|

Obama vows to lead global warming fight

"Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama vowed Monday to tell Americans tough truths about global warming, and backed a "cap and trade" system to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Illinois senator also argued the lagging US response to climate change was the product of gridlock in Washington -- in a swipe at his top rival Hillary Clinton, whom he portrays as a symptom of a US political malaise.

Obama's plan would see a 150 billion dollar investment in "climate friendly" energy, a bid to slash energy use in the economy and a target of cutting US reliance on foreign oil by at least 35 percent by 2030.

"Some of these policies are difficult politically, they aren't easy," Obama was to say in a speech in New Hampshire, according to excerpts released by his campaign.

"But being president of the United States isn't about doing what's easy. It's about doing what's hard, it's about doing what's right.

"Leadership isn't about telling people what they want to hear -- it's about telling them what they need to hear."

Obama's cap and trade program would cut greenhouse gas emissions to the level recommended by scientists, and he would lead a new drive for a global compact against global warming, his campaign said." |Read more|

3rd probe of Pumps on Canals requested

Is the Army Corps of Engineers putting New Orleans' residents safety at risk? Perhaps their incompetence resulted in the failure of the levees holding up during Hurricane Katrina. The entire Army Corps of Engineers need to be investigated.



Secretary Robert Gates has been asked to investigate a whistle-blower complaint that questions the reliability of 40 pumps the Army Corps of Engineers initially installed at three New Orleans canals after Hurricane Katrina.

It will be the third official review of the temporary pumping stations built under corps supervision at the 17th Street, London Avenue and Orleans Avenue canals after the storm's surge inundated the region 25 months ago, much of it rushing into the canals from Lake Pontchartrain and breaching substandard walls along 17th Street and London Avenue.

Corps commanders in New Orleans continue to say the once-troubled pumps have been overhauled and will work properly in a hurricane. The agency is providing information and running the pumps for a General Accounting Office team conducting a second investigation at the request of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans.

All probes were triggered by a corps engineer with the Los Angeles district, Maria Garzino, who says corps officials haven't properly addressed the critical issues she first raised in the spring of 2006 in her role as leader of the corps' pumping systems installation team.

"My office has received serious allegations which cast doubt on the integrity of costly pumping equipment installed in three main structures by USACE and its ability to protect New Orleans from further flooding," according to a Sept. 21 letter to Gates from Scott Bloch, head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

In his letter Bloch determined that Garzino's claims warrant further investigation under the federal whistle-blower statute.

"I have concluded that there is a substantial likelihood that the information Ms. Garzino provided discloses a violation," he wrote. "Consequently, I am referring this information to you for an investigation of and appropriate action regarding Ms. Garzino's allegations and a report of your findings within 60 days of your receipt of this letter."

Neither Bloch's office nor the Defense Department could be reached for comment. But Col. Jeff Bedey, commander of the corps' Hurricane Protection Office in New Orleans, said Friday that he is familiar with Bloch's call for an investigation and the supporting documentation.

"I am confident that all the pumps currently in place on the three outfall canals will operate as they were designed to operate in the event a hurricane requires that we close gates," Bedey said.

Group releases documents

Jeff Ruch, executive director of the national whistle-blower advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, predicted Gates will assign investigators independent of the corps to conduct a more detailed technical probe than he says has been done to date.

In the end, Ruch said, Bloch could reject as unreasonable any or all of the findings of the Gates-directed inquiry, require more information, or accept all the findings outright.

Ruch released Bloch's letter to Gates and Garzino's official five-page "disclosure" in support of her allegations to The Times-Picayune.

Ruch's agency isn't representing Garzino, but because she consented to being publicly identified for the purposes of the investigation, Ruch said his group opted to release the documents to ensure the process is made public.

Garzino, who could not be reached for comment, was dispatched to New Orleans last year to oversee quality control in the manufacture and installation of hydraulic pumps in temporary stations that the corps and its contractors were building at the mouths of all three canals.

The stations were built alongside massive floodgates, also constructed post-Katrina, to provide internal drainage for surrounding neighborhoods in the event the gates were ever closed against storm surges in future hurricanes. The pumps are designed to lift rising canal water up and around the closed gates.

The hydraulic pumps that Garzino questions are installed at all three canals. The corps also subsequently added new nonhydraulic, direct-drive pumps to increase capacity at the much larger 17th Street Canal, and the reliability of those pumps isn't in question.

But Garzino says shortcuts taken by the corps and the contractor, Moving Waters Industries of Deerfield, Fla., to meet a June 1, 2006, deadline set by Congress produced inherently flawed pumping systems that she says still have not been properly tested.

Corps vouches for pumps

Bedey said neither Garzino's allegations nor his response to them has changed.

"I absolutely believe that the (pump) team took the information from Ms. Garzino, who was correct to write her report, and all the other things we learned over time, and made the changes required in order to operate these pumps as intended," he said.

Bedey and other corps officials said publicly last summer that they were encountering problems with some of the pumps so severe that various components would be rebuilt after the 2006 season.

They also have said they didn't test the pumps as extensively in Moving Waters Industries' laboratory as ordinarily would be done because of the critical need to provide some additional flood protection for the 2006 storm season, the first since Katrina.

But Bedey said he still thinks the decision to install the troublesome pumps in New Orleans and continue to work on them during hurricane season was a more prudent decision than simply having no drainage pumps at all had a storm threatened the city.

"Just last week, when the GAO was out here, we turned on the pumps, and they ran as long as we had enough water to run them," Bedey said.

A major challenge to testing the hydraulic pumps on site -- rather than in the lab before delivery -- is that they must have a minimum amount of water in which to operate at full capacity, and that's been hard to come by during the mostly dry days since Katrina.

"We have done everything we can do. And some of those pumps have run five or six hours continuously," Bedey said. "But it is a fact that we've never had enough water at 17th Street to operate all the 43 pumps there at one time, nor do we believe we ever will unless there's a hurricane."

In its initial probe this spring, the GAO found no evidence of fraud or improper influence behind the corps' decision to award the multimillion-dollar contracts to Moving Waters Industries. But the GAO did criticize the corps for giving false assurances to the public during the 2006 hurricane season.

Once it became apparent that they wouldn't be able to correct serious vibration problems during the season, corps officials should have provided a more honest, less optimistic assessment of the ability of their troubled pumps to perform during a hurricane, the GAO said.

Just a few weeks later, a separate "technical review" was ordered by Brig. Gen Robert Crear, commander of the Mississippi Valley Division in Vicksburg, Miss., which oversees the corps in New Orleans. He summoned corps engineers from other districts to do the work, and in a June 4, 2007, memo, Crear and the engineers insisted the pumps have been tested and will work properly.

But the report also confirmed that another round of needed repairs that would provide even more reliability were only just getting under way.

As a result, Landrieu ordered a second GAO investigation.

Bedey said he hasn't yet been apprised of those findings and doesn't know whether that probe is complete.

Melting Ice Packs displaces Alaska Walrus

"Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.

Alaska's walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and fall are usually found on the Arctic ice pack. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas.

Walrus feed on clams, snails and other bottom dwellers. Given the choice between an ice platform over water beyond their 630-foot diving range or gathering spots on shore, thousands of walrus picked Alaska's rocky beaches." |Read more|