Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live - literally

By Geoffrey Lean
Published in The Independent 02 May 2004

Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

He said the Earth was entering the "first hot period" for 60 million years, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The warning - one of the starkest delivered by a top scientist - comes as ministers decide next week whether to weaken measures to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed".

The Prime Minister - who was launching a new alliance of governments, businesses and pressure groups to tackle global warming - added that he could not think of "any bigger long-term question facing the world community".

Yet the Government is considering relaxing limits on emissions by industry under an EU scheme on Tuesday.

Sir David said that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main "green- house gas" causing climate change - were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level - 379 parts per million - was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life.

"No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life," he said.

Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by 2100".

ICC climate change petition rejected

by Jane George

The effort to link climate change with human rights has suffered a setback.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights won’t consider a petition that alleges that the United States government is violating the human rights of Inuit by refusing to limit its greenhouse gas emissions.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who submitted the petition last December with the support of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in Canada and Alaska, received the news in a letter from the commission last month.

“It was disappointing for sure. Their letter was evasive and dismissive, and that’s the part that disappoints me and angers me more than anything else,” Watt-Cloutier said.

The letter states the commission “will not be able to process your petition at present... the information provided does not enable us to determine whether the alleged facts would tend to characterize a violation of rights protected by the American Declaration.”

But Watt-Cloutier hasn’t given up.

She’s asked the commission for further information on why it isn’t proceeding. She’s also invited commission members to visit the Arctic for a hearing “to provide testimony and documentation on these problems which are seriously affecting Inuit survival.”

Watt-Cloutier has told her 62 co-petitioners that “the issue remains much too important for us not to continue fighting for the world to take serious action against climate change.”

Watt-Cloutier said she isn’t discouraged by this down-turn of events.

“I’m an optimistic by nature. There are things that are happening today,” she said. “There’s some hope coming up now – Stéphane Dion is the Liberal leader.”

Watt-Cloutier unveiled the petition last December at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Montreal, which Dion, then the federal environment minister, chaired.

The petition then went to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington. The commission is an international legal body affiliated with the Organization of American States, but which operates at arms-length from the OAS and its member states.

The outcome of the legal action, supported by the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Alaska and Canada, was expected to have great influence on other courts and other jurisdictions.
The idea behind the petition, said Watt-Cloutier, was to encourage people in the South to realize climate change affects people as well the environment and the economy.

The detailed 175-page petition said climate change threatens the rights of Inuit to use and enjoy their traditional lands and personal property, their rights to health and life, to residence and movement and to their livelihood.

The petition asked for “relief from human rights violations resulting from the impacts of global warming and climate change caused by acts and omission of the U.S.,” which has not supported any mandatory reduction agreements designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming.

The petition also asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to visit the Arctic, conduct a hearing, and issue a report recommending the U.S. adopt mandatory measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions and cooperate on other international efforts.

The petition wanted the commission to produce plans to protect Inuit culture and resources, which would outline assistance options for adaptation and “any other relief that the commission considers appropriate and just.”

The petition mentioned no amount of money.

Since 1965, the commission has processed about 12,000 human rights cases, many of them involving allegations of mass murder, torture and arbitrary imprisonment made by victims of state terror in countries like Argentina, El Salvador and Guatemala. The body has also dealt with land rights cases brought forward by indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.

The Centre for International Environmental Law and the group Earth Justice provided free services to ICC in launching this petition and continue to provide legal follow-up. James Anaya, an aboriginal lawyer who works at the University of Arizona’s college of law, helped draft the petition, along with Nunavut lawyers Paul Crowley and Sandra Inutiq, and two graduate students from the U.S.

Watt-Cloutier said the next step is to wait and see how the commission reacts to the most recent round of correspondence.

“It is a long battle, but I think the least we expect is respect and some kind of a response.”
No matter what the petition’s fate is, Watt-Cloutier, who finished her tenure as ICC chair last July, intends to keep the focus on what she calls “the human face” of climate change in the Arctic.
Earlier this week, journalist Marianne Pearl, the widow of Daniel Pearl, a reporter murdered four years ago by terrorists in Pakistan, was in Iqaluit to interview Watt-Cloutier for a feature article, which will be published in the widely-circulated magazine, Glamour.

Then, Watt-Cloutier headed to Ottawa, where she was to be invested into the Order of Canada by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean on Friday, Dec. 15.

After Christmas, Watt-Cloutier plans to travel through five U.S. states on an “Arctic Voices” tour to raise awareness about the impact of climate change on Inuit.

Information Cleansing, Canadian Style

by Bill Berkowitz

If you're a teacher, student, journalist or just a plain concerned citizen interested in finding well-researched documentation about climate change, you can no longer depend on the Canadian government to supply that information.

According to Canada's Liberal Party, since early July, the country's government - under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper - has been systematically scrubbing its websites of information regarding global warming and the Kyoto Protocol treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

(As of Wednesday, Aug. 16, when you visit the government of Canada's Climate Change website, http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/, you find the following message: "The Government of Canada Climate Change site is currently unavailable.")

Despite its relatively short time in office, the Harper government has been repeatedly accused of following the lead of the George W. Bush administration in the United States.

Now, it appears it has taken up the Bush administration's habit of mixing science and politics by purposefully expunging information from federal websites dealing with climate change and its ramifications. In addition, in designing its new "Made in Canada" plan to deal with the environment and global warming - a plan due to be unveiled in October - government officials are working in secrecy and without significant participation from environmental organisations.

Harper's scepticism about global warming seems in line with the position of Pres. Bush, who has repeatedly claimed that the "jury is still out" on the issue. The prime minister has himself questioned the science of climate change, calling it a "controversial hypothesis."

His former environment critic, Bob Mills, has described the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to address climate change, which had been ratified by Canada's parliament during the previous government, "a great socialist plot."

According to a statement issued in late July by the Liberal Party, the Harper team "is engaging in revisionist science [However, revisionist science is not science, of course. Only science is science.] by systematically removing references to climate change from government websites."

"This is a government in denial about climate change," said Liberal Environment Critic Hon. John Godfrey. "They don't like the science, and now they want to censor it. [The Canadian government, under either Conservative or Liberal leadership, has been censoring scientists since the 80s.] This is Orwellian."

MP Mark Holland pointed out that the Harper "government is tied closely to leading climate change sceptics in the United States and the petroleum industry. This government has a track record of listening to people with dubious views on the environment and climate change. They pretend to be interested in a 'Made in Canada' approach, but this is code for doing nothing."

"The feds' own climate change site once offered a verbose, but realistic analysis of the problem [of global warming] and a high-minded, but unconvincing account of what the government was doing about it," wrote Richard Littlemore in a commentary posted in mid-July at DeSmogBlog.com.

"Never mind removing a reference to Kyoto; the words 'climate change' have been expunged from everything except the website title," maintained Littlemore, a journalist, speechwriter and senior counsellor at James Hoggan & Associates, a Canadian public relations firm.

"The government's strategy of pretending to be concerned about the environment while both dismantling programs to address climate change and scrubbing government websites clean of any information proving that global warming exists has Frank Luntz written all over it," added Liberal Party MP Mark Holland.

Luntz, who met with Harper and his conservative colleagues earlier this year, is a high-profile political pollster and strategist, who has helped shape the U.S. Republican Party's political agenda and messaging for more than a decade. The New Yorker magazine's Hendrik Hertzberg recently described Luntz as the "Johnny Appleseed of such linguistic innovations as 'death tax' for estate tax and 'personal accounts' for Social Security privatization."

One section of an infamous 2002 Luntz-authored memorandum, instructing Republican congressional candidates, was titled "Winning the Global Warming Debate: An Overview." Luntz advised candidates to "continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."

He maintained that "The most important principle in any discussion of global warming is your commitment to sound science... [Keep in mind that there is no such thing as "sound science" versus "junk science." There is only "science" and "not science."] The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science."

Ironically, while the Bush administration, and the Harper government, may still be sticking with this script, Luntz appears to have changed his mind on global warming. In a recent documentary first aired on the BBC, Luntz said that he "think[s] most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place, and that the behaviour of humans is affecting the climate."

When asked about the advice about climate change that he had been giving for years, Luntz said it was fair when he gave it. He added that if the Bush administration is still questioning the science, "That's up to the [them]. I'm not the administration. What they want to do is their business. And it's nothing to do with what I write. And it's nothing to do with what I believe."

The Liberal Party's press release also pointed to Harper's "close friendship" with former EnCana President and CEO Gwyn Morgan, "a leading climate change sceptic in Alberta, who Harper tried unsuccessfully to appoint to a position overseeing government patronage appointments."

"This is all about controlling information and not about controlling greenhouse gases," said Godfrey. "The government would be thrilled if the Canadian public simply forgot about global warming, and we're simply not going to allow that to happen."

Meanwhile, the Harper government has pledged to produce a comprehensive environmental initiative in October that will supposedly include programmes dealing with curbing greenhouse emissions blamed for global warming. Still in its formative stages, government officials maintain that they have been seeking a broad range of views on the issue, but according to a recent report by the Chronicle Herald, "many environmental groups say they've been shut out."

"The reality is that the public has not been consulted at all," said Ann Coxworth of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, one of the groups in the Climate Action Network, a coalition of environmental groups that has organised public forums and workshops in a number of Canadian cities.

Shortly after taking office, Harper put the kybosh on the Liberals' Project Green. The creation of the new environmental initiative appears to follow in the footsteps established by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney when he set about developing the Bush administration's energy plan. The Cheney Energy Task Force worked in secret and saw the Bush administration lean heavily on advice from utility companies, and the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defence Council.

The Harper project has thus far pretty much excluded environmental groups, and has been working "under tight secrecy," The Chronicle Herald reported.

"They're not giving us enough of what they intend to do for us to give them any significant advice on how to proceed," said John Bennett, executive director of the Climate Action Network. "We need to have a plan that all Canadians can work together on and you don't get a plan like that by going into a back room and then making an announcement six months later."

*Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.

Arctic native leader gives a warning

An Arctic native leader offered a passionate plea to the U.S. government and its citizens Wednesday to aggressively combat climate change. Addressing a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on global warming, Inuit Circumpolar Conference Chair Sheila Watt-Cloutier said the Inuit are already suffering dramatic changes to their Arctic environment. Watt-Cloutier, who represents the 155,000 Inuit in Greenland, Canada, Alaska and the Russian Federation, described the Inuit struggle as "a snapshot of what is happening to the planet." "We find ourselves at the very cusp of a defining event in the history of this planet," Watt-Cloutier told the senators. "The Earth is literally melting." Inuit hunters and elders have been observing changes to their environment for decades, Watt-Cloutier said, including unpredictable weather, melting of permafrost and glaciers, decreasing sea ice, as well as the presence of new species such as barn owls, robins and mosquitoes never seen before by the Inuit people. "If we can reverse the emissions of greenhouse gases in time to save the Arctic, then we can spare untold suffering," said Watt-Cloutier. "Protect the Arctic and you will save the planet," she said. "Use us as your early warning system. Use the Inuit story as a vehicle to reconnect us all so that we can understand the people and the planet are one." Committee chair John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said a recent trip to the Arctic showed him that "these impacts are real and consistent with earlier scientific projects that the Arctic region would experience the impacts of climate change at a faster rate than the rest of the world."

Wednesday's hearing was part of an ongoing effort by McCain to rally more support for the climate stewardship bill he and Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman have coauthored. "We are the first generation to influence the climate and the last generation to escape the consequences," McCain said. The Arizona Senator's legislation would require some sectors of the U.S. economy to enact mandatory reductions of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions - the leading greenhouse gas. The bill was defeated in the Senate last October by a vote of 53 to 44, but supporters of the legislation said the vote was a watershed moment in the U.S. debate over the issue of global warming. It was the first action on the issue by the Senate in six years. McCain said he is determined not to abandon the proposal, but he acknowledges the bill has little support in the House or within the Bush administration. Although a new report from the White House on climate change cited studies that linking rising temperatures to human activities, "officials have said there is no change in the administration's policy position," McCain said. President Bush is loathe to enforce mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reductions on American industries and has repeatedly questioned the science that points to the effects of these emissions on the climate. Few doubt global warming is an international concern, but critics of the administration note that the United States, which is responsible for more than 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, must play a leading role in efforts to limit consumption of fossil fuels. New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg said it is politics - not science - that is prohibiting U.S. action on global warming. "I am disturbed by the administration's shifting position on climate change," Lautenberg said. "We need leadership at the top and we are not getting it."

The hearing included testimony from authors of two recent studies that indicate failure to curb global warming could have devastating effects. One study, published in August in the journal "Science" shows that heat waves in North America and Europe will become more intense, more frequent and longer lasting during this century. The second study, published in August in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" details how global warming will bring California a dramatic increase in extreme heat and heat-related mortality and significant reductions in Sierra snowpack, with cascading impacts on water supply. The California study focused on two scenarios and showed that significant changes in temperature are likely regardless of what is done in the immediate future to reduce emissions. "The greenhouse gases that we are emitting today will reside in the atmosphere for decades, perhaps for a century - that makes this a pressing problem," said study coauthor Daniel Cayan, a research meteorologist, with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego. Under the study's lower emissions scenario, summer temperatures in California will still rise 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, with the length of the heat wave season extending from an average of 115 days in a year to 149 to 162 days But if nothing is done to curb the use of fossil fuels, summer temperatures rise a dramatic 7.5 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the study, with the length of the heat wave season increasing to 178 to 204 days. "It is pretty clear that when we think of our kids and their kids they will be wanting to deal with the lower emissions scenario," Cayan said. Watt-Cloutier told the commitee that the observations of the Inuit are backed by the findings of Western scientists, in particular the work of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA).

The ACIA is an international team of 300 scientists, experts, and indigenous residents of the Arctic region who are preparing a comprehensive analysis of the impacts and consequences of climate variability and changes across the region. Their final report is slated for release this November - Watt-Cloutier said the Bush administration is blocking the ACIA from publishing its recommendations for action as a standalone report. She says the move is driven by politics and is a bid to remove pressure on the United States to engage in specific greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The scientific analysis contained in the report paints a worrying future for the Inuit The ACIA has found that in Alaska and western Canada, the average winter temperatures have increased by as much as 3 to 4 degrees Celsius over the past 60 years. During the past 30 years, Arctic sea ice extent has decreased, on average, by about 10 percent, and this change has been 20 percent faster during the past two decades. Continued melting of sea ice will lead to significant changes in the surface reflectivity, cloudiness, humidity, exchanges of heat and moisture, and ocean circulation, in particular along coastlines and near ice margins. Watt-Cloutier said two major conclusions of ACIA report are that marine species dependent on sea ice face an uncertain future and that global warming will disrupt - and potentially destroy - the Inuit culture. Warmer climates could bring insects with diseases the Inuit have never known and the species they depend upon - such as the polar bear - are unlikely to survive if global warming continues unabated. "The ancient connection to our hunting culture may disappear within my grandson's lifetime," Watt-Cloutier said. "My Arctic homeland is now the health barometer for the planet."

(originally posted here.)