Bush Climate Meeting Draws Doubts about Action
August 08, 2007 — By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
WASHINGTON -- A U.S. summit in September on climate change, one of at least four international meetings set for this year, is already raising doubts about any action being taken before President Bush leaves office.
The big question is what will replace the Kyoto Protocol when that agreement to cap greenhouse gases expires in 2012.
The United States has never been part of the Kyoto pact, with Bush having said its economic costs make it "fundamentally flawed." But the president has been vocal recently about the need for a new strategy to curb climate-warming emissions.
In May, Bush announced plans to develop the strategy by the end of 2008, which critics were quick to point out is less than a month before the end of his second and final term.
A White House announcement Friday of a gathering of the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitting countries on Sept. 27-28 in Washington is part of the strategy to involve developing countries in the move to cut the pollutants.
But even before the announcement, participants in the first full-scale U.N. session on climate change last week questioned the U.S. role in the debate.
"The constant excuse that the United States has given for not participating in a climate regime, by blaming India and China ... is not just unfortunate but I think is very far from the truth," Sunita Narain, director of India's Center for Science and Environment, told reporters at the U.N. session.
MAJOR POLLUTERS
Fast-developing China and India are not compelled to cut emissions. Narain said the long-term emissions racked up by the industrialized world more than make up for the rising emissions from the two Asian countries.
As an example, she said China's annual per capita carbon emissions are 3.5 tons, compared with 20 tons for the United States. Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases that trap heat near the Earth's surface and spur global warming.
The Bush administration's position has evolved from questioning how much human activities contribute to climate change to agreeing to work with other rich countries to craft international goals.
Bush has rejected mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions in favor of voluntary caps -- the main divergence between the U.S. stance and countries in the Kyoto Protocol.
The Washington gathering, to be led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and addressed by Bush, is set for the same week world leaders convene at the United Nations, including a one-day session dedicated to climate change on Sept. 24.
The list for the Washington meeting includes some of the world's worst contributors to global warming: Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.
'CREDIBILITY PROBLEM'
In the invitation, Bush said the United States wants to work with these countries on a "new global framework" that would contribute to an international agreement under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change by 2009.
While Washington has avoided committing to Kyoto, it is a party to the U.N. climate change treaty -- Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, signed it in 1992 -- which aims to avert dangerous climate change.
By agreeing to dovetail with the U.N. treaty, the Bush administration has raised cautious hopes for U.S. action among environmentalists, even as they worry that dangerous climate change is already occurring.
The White House assertion that the September meeting is the start of a process likely to end by late 2008 "could leave other nations with the perception that (the U.S.) administration is trying to run out the clock," said Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the group Environmental Defense.
But the Bush team could play a useful role if it re-engages other nations within the context of the U.N. climate change treaty, Petsonk said in a telephone interview.
The U.N. treaty framework is where the international community is working out a way forward after the Kyoto pact expires. The U.N. treaty countries are to meet later this month in Vienna, Austria, and again in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
Because the United States is a long-time greenhouse gas emitter, Petsonk said, "the administration has to overcome a pretty major credibility problem with other countries if it wants to make that useful contribution."
Source: Reuters
U.S. Environment Chief Draws Fire on Global Warming
July 27, 2007 — By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's environment chief drew fire Thursday from Democratic senators for delaying a decision on whether to let California regulate global warming emissions from cars and light trucks.
Stephen Johnson, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has said the government will decide this question by year's end, two years after California's first request to set state air quality standards stricter than national rules.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, told Johnson at a hearing she found the delay incomprehensible.
"I fail to understand why it should take the agency until December, a total of two years, to decide this waiver request. In 30 years, EPA has granted over 50 waiver requests and has never denied one. ... Deciding this issue should not take so long," Boxer said.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, accused Johnson of "foot-dragging," and added, "The environment cannot wait any longer."
California, the most populous U.S. state, has passed a law requiring that cars and light trucks cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, by 18 percent by 2020.
In December 2005, California asked EPA for permission -- known as a waiver -- to implement these state air quality requirements that are stricter than the national standard. If the waiver is granted, 12 other states that have passed similar requirements would be free to put those into practice, too.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming, ordering the agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.
Since then, the environmental agency has called for public comment on the California matter, and is conducting a "rigorous analysis" of the more than 60,000 comments it received, Johnson said.
Boxer noted that some 54,000 of these comments were brief letters urging EPA to grant the waiver. Johnson countered that there were also hundreds of pages of technical data that had been submitted and that must be analyzed.
Boxer, a longtime environmentalist, has introduced legislation to require the agency to make a decision by September 30.
She also said at the hearing she was troubled by documents that indicate staff at the U.S. Transportation Department "lobbied members of Congress and governors" to oppose the waiver. A Transportation Department spokesman confirmed these contacts had been made and said they were not unique.
To Boxer, these moves were "unprecedented, unprincipled use of taxpayer dollars to tilt the scales of another agency's decision-making process, even before public comments were considered."
Besides California, the 12 other states that have approved the higher greenhouse gas emission standards are: Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Source: Reuters
In Climate Change Debate, U.S. Eyes Turn to California
June 21, 2007 — By Samantha Young, Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- It celebrates tree-sitters like Julia Butterfly Hill, who spent two years on top of a giant redwood to prevent it from being chopped down. And its laws protect geckos, yellow-billed cuckoos and the Mohave ground squirrel.
While sometimes ridiculed for its granola image and left-leaning tendencies, California also has set the agenda for clean air, clean water and other health standards that later become the norm in middle America. It was the first to kick smokers out of bars, order tailpipe smog checks and put warnings on beer.
Today, the state where drivers of hybrid cars cruise solo in the carpool lane serves as the template for other states on global warming policy. Even the federal government has been forced to take notice.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently endorsed California's strategy to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles. That validates the state's claim that the emissions should be classified as air pollutants over the objections of the Bush administration.
At least a dozen other states are expected to follow suit should the Environmental Protection Agency give California the right to limit auto emissions. A final decision is expected later this year.
Meanwhile, the state is polishing up a new law that would bar its utilities from buying electricity from out-of-state coal plants that don't meet certain emissions standards. Coal produces more carbon dioxide than any other commonly used U.S. fuel source.
"California definitely has been an early leader on a wide variety of environmental issues, and I think that leadership has been continuing on global warming," said Judi Greenwald, a director at the nonprofit Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a nonpartisan group based in Arlington, Virginia.
There's a reason for the state's progressiveness. California, the world's eighth largest economy, is the world's 12th largest producer of greenhouse gases.
Global warming is expected to have a profound effect on the nation's most populous state, home to one of every eight Americans. Rising temperatures threaten to diminish its water supply, increase flooding and fuel more intense wildfires, while parts of its famed coastline will be inundated by rising sea levels. Agriculture, its No. 1 industry, also could suffer, even putting California's famed wine country at risk.
A wide majority of residents support steps to curb the state's contribution to climate change. A 2006 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that eight in 10 residents believe global warming will be a very or somewhat serious threat to the state's future economy and quality of life. Two-thirds said the state should address the issue.
"I think all of us can just live a little better," said Julie Cozzolino, a teacher who was loading groceries into her Honda Civic hybrid after shopping at a natural foods co-op in Sacramento. "My biggest concern is people should get their heads out of the sand. It's amazing to me that people don't assume any responsibility."
The state's sheer size, its economic diversity and variable geography present scientists and policy makers with a unique place to observe the changes wrought by climate change, and to craft potential solutions.
It's an influential role that California has demonstrated in the past, becoming the nation's de-facto lab for environmental policy.
California lawmakers enacted the first rules to reduce smog and required utilities to use alternative energy. State standards led industry to develop more efficient refrigerators and air conditioners, as well as the catalytic converter.
Recognizing the state's pioneering status on environmental issues, Congress in the 1960s gave California the ability to set its own air pollution controls. Four decades later, it is using that special authority to make its own strides on global warming.
Last fall, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that imposed the first statewide cap on greenhouse gases, garnering worldwide attention for a move that put California at odds with the Bush administration.
The law, written by Democrats, requires California to reduce emissions by an estimated 25 percent by 2020 -- an estimated 174 million metric tons.
Absent federal leadership, at least 15 states are exploring their own strategies for reducing the gases blamed for global warming. They include increasing renewable energy, selling agricultural carbon credits and encouraging energy efficiency. It's a movement Schwarzenegger recently described as "hip" and "sexy."
"What we do in California has unbelievable impact and it has consequences," Schwarzenegger told an audience at Georgetown University this spring. "When you look at the globe, California is a little spot, but the kind of power and influence that we have on the rest of the world is an equivalent of a whole huge continent."
While California has moved aggressively to address climate change, it also has borrowed ideas from others. In the Northeast, for example, seven states began an effort in 2003 to cap emissions from power plants. Europe has been testing carbon trading systems since 2005.
Nevertheless, other states are pointing to California as the next model on global warming. In February, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine signed an executive order patterned after California's greenhouse gas emissions law.
In May, Utah became the sixth state to join a Western coalition, initiated by Schwarzenegger, that will set a regional target for emissions.
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who represents the state, has said she hopes to model federal legislation after California's emissions law.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger and California lawmakers want to do even more. The governor has asked state air regulators to adopt a low-carbon fuel standard, while Democrats are pushing for increased use of alternative fuels, issues that have seeped into the presidential campaigns.
The state also is demanding more of its cities and counties. Attorney General Jerry Brown has sued San Bernardino County in Southern California for failing to control urban sprawl in its 25-year growth plan, noting that transportation is the state's major source of greenhouse gases.
Carl Pope, executive director of the San Francisco-based Sierra Club, said California's political leaders have seized on the momentum and don't want to relinquish it.
"Other states are fumbling over each other to catch up with us," he said, "and Washington is brain-dead on the issue."
Source: Associated Press
G8 Agreement on Climate Change a "Disgrace": Al Gore
Reuters
Thursday 14 June 2007
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore denounced a deal by world leaders on curbing
greenhouse gases as "a disgrace disguised as an achievement," saying
on Thursday the agreement struck last week was insufficient.
The dedicated climate crusader, whose 2006 global warming documentary won an Oscar, said leaders at last week's G8 summit in Germany had not risen to the challenge to respond to what he calls a "planetary emergency."
G8 leaders agreed to pursue "substantial" reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, stopping short of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's hopes for concrete numerical commitments on emission reductions, including her key aim to cut gases by 50 percent by 2050.
They said they would negotiate a new global climate pact that would extend and broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
"It was a disgrace disguised as an achievement," Gore said at an event in Milan, where he praised Merkel for her efforts.
"The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps."'
The former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate is spearheading efforts to get the world of pop music to back his crusade with the Live Earth concerts on July 7, which will be held in numerous cities around the world.
Gore served as Democrat President Bill Clinton's vice president and narrowly lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush.
U.S. Rejects EU Emission Reductions
May 30, 2007 — By David Rising, Associated Press
James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the United States is not against setting goals but prefers to focus them on specific sectors, such as reducing dependence on gasoline and cleaner coal. "The U.S. has different sets of targets," he said.
Germany, which holds the European Union and Group of 8 presidencies, is proposing a so-called "two-degree" target, whereby global temperatures would be allowed to increase no more than 2 degrees Celsius -- the equivalent of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit -- before being brought back down. Practically, experts have said that means a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Connaughton, who is on a one-week bipartisan trip to Europe with members of the House of Representatives, said the U.S. favors "setting targets in the context of national circumstances."
But despite the disagreements, Connaughton said the G-8 meeting, which brings together the leaders of Germany, the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Japan, could still result in a productive conclusion.
"Let the G-8 process run its course," he said. "Give the leaders a chance."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who opposes Bush on climate policy, urged international cooperation in tackling climate change.
Pelosi, on a separate trip to Berlin, hailed Chancellor Angela Merkel's "extraordinary leadership" in fighting climate change and agreed "that these solutions must be multilateral."
"We are trying to preserve the planet, which many in our country, including I, believe is God's creation, and we have a responsibility to preserve it," Pelosi said, speaking alongside the German leader after a meeting at the chancellery.
The California Democrat said faith-based organizations could play a role in battling climate change. The United States needed "the spirit of science to show us the way and faith-based organizations to help mobilize to preserve the planet," Pelosi said.
Merkel, who will host the summit of leaders from the G-8 in Heiligendamm, was diplomatic as she met with Pelosi and her bipartisan congressional delegation. The German leader said she was delighted there was "a bipartisan movement in the U.S. Congress that pays great importance to the issue of energy."
Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has been more blunt, voicing regret after he met Pelosi on Monday at the difficulty of achieving "concrete results" with the Bush administration.
"I think that what we could achieve is at least a mandate for negotiations -- a clear mandate -- for the climate conference" later this year in Bali, Indonesia, which is set to consider future action against global warming, Gabriel told ARD television.
"The United States is rejecting that as well, so far," he said, but "if we could achieve that, then I think Heiligendamm would have achieved a breakthrough."
The U.S. refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol limiting emissions because developing countries were not included. Rising economic giants, China and India, are exempt, and the treaty says nothing about post-2012 cuts.
Bush has argued that Kyoto would harm the U.S. economy and unfairly excludes developing countries such as China and India from obligations.
Pelosi has disagreed with that decision on Kyoto, but has said she wants to work with the Bush administration rather than provoke it. On the way to Europe, her delegation stopped in Greenland and saw the effects of global warming firsthand, she said.
------
Associated Press writer Kirsten Grieshaber contributed to this report.
Source: Associated Press
Supreme Court Takes Up What Could Be Key Ruling on Climate Change
6/27/06June 27, 2006 — By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Running for president, George W. Bush said he was ready to regulate carbon dioxide. But in early 2001, shortly after taking office, he changed his mind.
It would be too expensive to force reductions of the leading heat-trapping "greenhouse gas" that is at the heart of the debate over global warming, the president said.
Now the Supreme Court may force the president to shift gears again -- or it may support his argument that there are other, cheaper ways to address climate change.
The court agreed Monday to take up a case brought by a dozen states to require the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide released from the tailpipes of automobiles and other motor vehicles.
The ruling could be one of the court's most important ever involving the environment, determining how the nation addresses global warming.
Spurred by states in a pollution battle with the Bush administration, the court said it would decide whether the EPA is required under the federal Clean Air Act to treat carbon dioxide from automobiles as a pollutant harmful to public health.
Bush repeatedly has rejected calls by environmentalists and some lawmakers in Congress to regulate carbon dioxide, favoring voluntary actions and development of new technologies to curtail such emissions.
But a dozen states argued that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping chemicals from automobile tailpipes should be treated as unhealthy pollutants. They filed a lawsuit in an effort to force the EPA to curtail such emissions just as it does cancer-causing lead and chemicals that produce smog and acid rain.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take the case after a divided lower court sided with the administration. Arguments will be late this year, with a ruling by next June.
"This is going to be the first major statement by the Supreme Court on climate change. ... This is the whole ball of wax," said David Bookbinder, an attorney for the Sierra Club, one of a number of environmental groups that joined the states in their appeal to the high court.
While the case doesn't specifically involve carbon releases from power plants, environmentalists said a court decision declaring carbon dioxide a harmful pollutant would make it hard for the agency to avoid action involving power plants that account for 40 percent or the carbon dioxide released into the air.
Cars and trucks account for about half that amount.
The EPA said in a statement that the agency "is confident in its decision" not to regulate the chemical under the federal Clean Air Act and plans to argue its case vigorously before the high court
Recently, Bush told reporters he views global warming as a serious problem and has "a plan to be able to deal with greenhouse gases" short of regulating their use. It includes developing new technologies for cleaner burning coal, using alternative motor fuels such as ethanol as substitutes for gasoline and expanding nuclear power to produce electricity.
Critics argue that carbon emissions have continued to increase -- though the rate of increase has declined -- and only regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will stem the amount going into the atmosphere.
"It is encouraging that the high court feels this case needs to be reviewed," said Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., who has campaigned in Congress to regulate carbon dioxide. "It is high time to stop relying on technicalities and finger pointing to avoid action on climate change."
The states involved, which together account for more than a third of the car market, say the Clean Air Act makes clear carbon dioxide is a pollutant that should be regulated if it poses a danger to public health and welfare. They argue it does so by causing a warming of the earth.
The administration maintains that unlike other chemicals that must be controlled to ensure healthy air, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is not a dangerous pollutant under the federal law. And, officials argue, even if it is, the EPA has discretion over whether to regulate it, considering the economic costs involved.
The agency should not be required to "embark on the extraordinarily complex and scientifically uncertain task of addressing the global issue of greenhouse gas emissions" when voluntary ways to address climate change are available, the administration argued in its filing with the high court.
While a federal appeals court sided with the administration, its ruling was mixed.
One judge said the states and other plaintiffs had no standing because they had not proven harm. A second judge said even if the law gave the EPA authority to regulate carbon dioxide, the agency was not obligated to do so. A third judge, in the minority, said the EPA was violating the law by not regulating the chemical.
In their appeal, the states maintained the case "goes to the heart of the EPA's statutory responsibilities to deal with the most pressing environmental problem of our time" -- the threat of global warming.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit were California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. They were joined by a number of cities including Baltimore, New York City and Washington D.C., the Pacific island of America Samoa, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth.
The case is Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 05-1120
Study Says Polar Bears May Turn to Cannibalism
June 14, 2006 — By Dan Joling, Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.
The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.
Polar bears feed primarily on ringed seals and use sea ice for feeding, mating and giving birth.
Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance, and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food seems to be less common, said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.
"During 24 years of research on polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska and 34 years in northwestern Canada, we have not seen other incidents of polar bears stalking, killing, and eating other polar bears," the scientists said.
Environmentalists contend shrinking polar ice due to global warming may lead to the disappearance of polar bears before the end of the century.
The Center for Biological Diversity of Joshua Tree, Calif., in February 2005 petitioned the federal government to list polar bears as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Cannibalism demonstrates the effect on bears, said Kassie Siegal, lead author of the petition.
"It's very important new information," she said. "It shows in a really graphic way how severe the problem of global warming is for polar bears."
Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions, a group aimed at pursuing solutions for climate change, said the study represents the "bloody fingerprints" of global warming.
"This is not a Coca-Cola commercial," she said, referring to animated polar bears used in advertising for the soft drink giant. "This represents the brutal downside of global warming."
The predation study was published in an online version of the journal Polar Biology on April 27. Amstrup said print publication will follow.
Researchers in spring 2004 found more bears in the eastern portion of the Alaska Beaufort Sea to be in poorer condition than bears in areas to the west and north.
Researchers discovered the first kill in January 2004. A male bear had pounced on a den, killed a female and dragged it 245 feet away, where it ate part of the carcass. Females are about half the size of males.
"In the face of the den's outer wall were deep impressions of where the predatory bear had pounded its forepaws to collapse the den roof, just as polar bears collapse the snow over ringed seal lairs," the paper said.
"From the tracks, it appeared that the predatory bear broke through the roof of the den, held the female in place while inflicting multiple bites to the head and neck. When the den collapsed, two cubs were buried, and suffocated, in the snow rubble."
In April 2004, while following bear footprints on sea ice near Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, scientists discovered the partially eaten carcass of an adult female. Footprints indicated it had been with a cub.
The male did not follow the cub, indicating it had killed for food instead of breeding.
A few days later, Canadian researchers found the remains of a yearling that had been stalked and killed by a predatory bear, the scientists said.
Source: Associated Press
College Republicans Call for Beach Parties to Mock Global Warming
[The piece below was published this week by syndicated columnist Ed Flattau of Global Horizons]Whatever happened to the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, a political party distinguished by its forward-looking environmental policy? Today, we have the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) urging its 200,000 student members on 1500 campuses to hold beach parties to mock the threat of global warming. If this is representative of the generation that is going to inherit the earth, the earth is in trouble big-time. Indeed, deriding climate change is the last thing we need from the age group that could well have the last best chance to atone for the environmental sins of the past.
So the question becomes: is the CRNC'S stance of self-destructive denial a preview of the future identity of the Republican Party? If CRNC'S call to revelry has any traction, you've got to wonder what in heaven's name is being taught in colleges these days regarding science, moral values, and social responsibility. The CRNC derives its dismissive view of global warming from a small clique of increasingly discredited scientists who claim the climate change threat is an exercise in scaremongering. It is a claim that is refuted by the weight of evidence, and subsequently by a consensus of scientists (including leading climatologists) throughout the world.
Global warming may not signal the end of civilization, but nor should it be the target of ridicule. Responsible political leaders cannot afford to sit idly by and wait for proof of a false alarm while the average global temperature is rising with rapidity unprecedented in memory. They don't have the luxury of wallowing in pedantry at the inconclusiveness of the evidence when ice is melting at a record clip at both poles. They would be derelict to procrastinate because of the complexity of the issue. Uncertainty is no excuse for apathy, and reflection without action is not the answer, when significant impacts from climate change are being abruptly felt by man, beast, and plants in many places around the world.
Facing such a potentially calamitous condition, governments have a moral obligation to implement whatever cost-effective precautionary measures are available. These are measures (e.g. energy conservation, reforestation) that standing alone make sense even if global warming turns out not to be as menacing as originally thought.
As for college age Republicans, if they blindly follow the titular head of their party and thumb their noses at reality, let us pray they don't end up in political office. On a more contemporary note, should the Republican students choose to frolic on a beach to celebrate rising sea levels and killer heat waves, let's hope they don't forget their sunblock.
@Copyright 2006, Edward Flattau
Warming Causes Record Arctic Ice Melt, U.S. Report Says
September 29, 2005 — By Timothy Gardner, Reuters
NEW YORK — The Arctic ice shelf has melted for the fourth straight year to its smallest area in a century, driven by rising temperatures that appear linked to a buildup of greenhouse gases, U.S. scientists said Wednesday.
Scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which have monitored the ice via satellites since 1978, say the total Arctic ice in 2005 will cover the smallest area since they started measuring.
It is the least amount of Arctic ice in at least a century, according to both the satellite data and shipping data going back many more years, according to a report from the groups.
As of Sept. 21, the Arctic sea ice area had dropped to 2.05 million square miles , the report said.
From 1978 to 2000, the sea ice area averaged 2.70 million square miles, the report said. It noted the melting trend had shrunk Inuit hunting grounds and endangered polar bears, seals and other wildlife.
The report warns that if melting rates continue, the summertime Arctic may be completely ice-free before the end of the century, echoing last year's findings from the Arctic Council, an eight-nation report by 250 experts.
The melting trend increasingly appeared to be caused by a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the scientists said.
"It's increasingly difficult to argue against the notion that at least part of what we are seeing in the Arctic, in terms of sea ice, in terms of warming temperatures ... is due to the greenhouse effect," Mark Serreze, a research scientist at NSIDC, said in an interview.
"We've put a hit on the system and we are in the midst of a grand global experiment," Serreze said about the impact of global warming and ice melting on humans and animals. "We will have to live with the outcome."
The NSIDC, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder, helps NASA analyze satellite data.
Most scientists believe greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide that is released mainly from cars and utility smokestacks, cause global warming by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. Many believe global warming can lead to catastrophic consequences, including raising sea levels and strengthening weather events such as hurricanes.
One Arctic variation, known as Arctic Oscillation, an atmospheric circulation pattern that can push sea ice out of the area, had become less of an influence in the region since the mid-1990s, the report said.
Inuit hunters threatened by the melting of Arctic ice plan to file a petition in December accusing the United States of violating their human rights by fueling global warming. The Bush administration has opted out of the Kyoto Treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Inuit number about 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.
Scientists say the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe because water or bare earth, once uncovered, soaks up more heat than ice and snow. That process means melting can spur even warmer temperatures and more melting.
Source: Reuters
HOUSTON — Commander Eileen Collins said astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread environmental destruction on Earth and warned Thursday that greater care was needed to protect natural resources. 
The analysis by climatologist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows for the first time that major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific since the 1970s have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Former President Clinton sounded a warning Tuesday against the dangers of climate change as he met with young South Africans, and had lunch with anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.