New Cook Islands Shark Sanctuary proposed

Activists in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific are proposing a huge new shark sanctuary in the face of fishing pressures and the continued massive drop in shark numbers over the last decade worldwide. The Pacific Islands Conservation Initiative, or PICI, is working with local fishery authorities to craft the Cook Islands Shark Sanctuary to extend over the Cook Islands Exclusive Economic Zone, which covers almost 2 million square kilometers of ocean.

“It’s pretty exciting to see this idea start to unfold and to see the community get behind it, and to actually feel like we might accomplish something of measurable impact,” says Jessica Cramp, program manager at PICI, interviewed by phone from the Cook Islands.

PICI is a small operation, started by Steve Lyon, who owns Pacific Divers, a dive shop in Rorotonga. He is also president of the Tourism Industry Council there. Cramp is the only other volunteer so far, and has been involved for seven months.

Of the 18 known species of sharks in the Cook Islands, Cramp says, 15 appear on a “red list” put out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, or the IUCN. That list is a widely recognized measure of species’ vulnerability to extinction, scaled from “least concern” to “extinct.” Five of the shark species in the Cook Islands are listed as being “vulnerable” or “endangered.”

The cause, of course, is soup. Sharks all over the world are finned in ever-greater numbers to feed a massive market for shark fins in Asia. A 2000 study by Shelley Clarke and other researchers estimated, after a program to genetically ID fins for years, that the fins of 38 million sharks were traded through the main Hong Kong fin market every year. It was noted that that estimate could range as low as 26 million or as high as 73 million.

Not only do large-scale fishing operations long-line specifically for sharks, but sharks are a very common by-catch in other fisheries, such as tuna, and the valuable fins are often used to pay the crew on those boats. The crew, then, have plenty of incentive to kill as many sharks as possible and not to return them to the water alive.

Until recently, the Cook Islands saw relatively little of this, and their biodiversity is quite good. However, the island nation recently signed an agreement with Chinese fishing interests that will soon begin to work in its waters, and this has PICI and others rushing to try to make the shark sanctuary a reality.

The nations of Palau, the Maldives, Tokelau, the Bahamas, Honduras and the Marshall Islands have already set aside shark refuges.

“Research studies have shown that the population of sharks have declined,” Cramp said. “Their biological characteristics make them unable to keep up with the fishing practices that are happening right now. They’re late to mature, slow growers and have very few pups -- they usually have about 6 to 10 pups, sometimes every two years.”

PICI has met with the prime minister and hopes to help write the sanctuary law with the Ministry of Marine Resources, and then to also put forward a separate Shark Act, to give the ministry two different laws that can be used to prosecute illegal shark fishing. Several shark-fishing regulations are already common on commercial boats, but the laws are easily skirted. Cramp says that, because of abuses, many organizations now are pushing for a zero-take, no-fin policy that bans the practice altogether.


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Top photo: Gray reef shark in the waters off the Cook Islands. Credit: Graham McDonald.

Bottom photo: Steve Lyon and Jessica Cramp of PICI. Credit: PICI.

Sen. Barbara Boxer seeks climate-change action from summit

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) stepped up Wednesday to deliver an appeal from Capitol Hill for action at the mostly lackluster U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which wraps up this week in Durban, South Africa. Her speech was delivered to an almost-empty Senate TV/radio gallery, which is indicative of the low priority given ongoing greenhouse gas treaty negotiations by the federal government and the media.

Audience shortfall be damned, Boxer soldiered on, registering her support for urgent action in Durban and beyond, and attacking climate deniers who have slowed progress toward reform. She and 15 other senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton looking for a “strong and ambitious outcome” in Durban.

“Although I am not there with you in person, it in no way lessens my commitment to the work that you are doing in Durban and the importance of your mission to address climate change,” Boxer said. A text of the speech was also provided to the media.

“This massive threat to the environment and human health that is posed by climate change requires us to put aside partisan differences, to find common ground and to demand immediate international action.”

The speech was delivered against a backdrop of years of failed attempts by Congress to pass meaningful legislation that would curb greenhouse gas emissions, or to even set targets for those reductions. The comments addressed directly the United States’ refusal to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which did set reduction targets and which is regarded as a failure of leadership on the part of the U.S., especially in Europe. Key provisions of the Kyoto treaty will expire in 2012 without further action.

Boxer had two main points in her presentation: one, that climate change is already costing us huge money, and two, that global-warming deniers are endangering lives.

On the first point, she cited National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration studies that have tracked the cost of large storms and found that from January to August 2011, 10 or more weather disasters caused over $1 billion in damages — a record — and that the country is plagued by widespread drought and wildfires.

She also cited a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists tagging the public health consequences of increased ozone pollution caused by higher temperatures by the year 2020, including: $5.4 billion in increased health costs, 2.8 million more acute respiratory symptoms, and several other startling figures.

Boxer seemed to save particular ire for global-warming deniers, however, saying, “The message I have for climate deniers is this: You are endangering humankind.”

To punch this home, she quoted a Pentagon study saying climate change was real and would have serious impacts on defense, diplomacy and economics.

“It is time for climate deniers to face reality, because the body of evidence is overwhelming and the world’s leading scientists agree,” Boxer said.

The Durban conference ends Friday.

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Photo: U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in the Senate TV/radio room calling for ambitious and credible action at the U.N. climate change conference that ends this week in Durban, South Africa. Credit: U.S. Senate Photo Studio.

NPR reports Kyoto Protocol in trouble in Durban

You may have noticed that news coverage of the U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa, has been minimal, at best, and that’s clearly because -– just like in Copenhagen last year -– there has been almost no mention of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was put in place to set reduction targets for important greenhouse gases. Without a big, juicy target, the conference lacks the drama to merit mention on even the eco-blogs.

Key aspects of the Kyoto treaty expire in 2012, and NPR boldly goes where no one else seems to want to tread, addressing the more-than-hypothetical: What if Kyoto elapses and nothing happens?

Answer? We’re in trouble. As noted in previous posts on this blog, international treaties have been effective in dealing with global issues like the hole in the ozone layer (Montreal Protocol). More important, without the Kyoto treaty, or something like it, the 192 nations attending the conference don’t really have a framework for setting emission-reduction targets or tackling this in any global way.

The U.S. is still not a signatory to the Kyoto treaty, and China, now the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, wasn’t even covered by it, since it was treated as a “developing” nation.

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Photo: Head of the Polish delegation Tomasz Chruszczow, left, and European Union Climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzenger speaks during a news conference at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa. Almost 200 nations began global climate talks on Monday with time running out to save the Kyoto Protocol. Credit: Rogan Ward/Reuters.

U.N. Durban climate conference wrangles over funds for poor nations

DURBAN, South Africa — International climate negotiators were at odds Tuesday on how to raise billions of dollars to help poor countries cope with global warming. A major shipping group is willing to help, endorsing a proposal for a carbon tax on vessels carrying the world's trade.

Details of the tussle over the funding emerged as the U.N.’s weather agency reported that 2011 was tied as the 10th-hottest year since record-keeping began in 1850. Arctic sea ice, a barometer for the entire planet, had shrunk to a record-low volume, said the World Meteorological Organization.

Putting the final touches on what's known as the Green Climate Fund is a top issue at the 192-party U.N. climate conference that was in its second day Tuesday in the South African coastal city of Durban, and one of the keys to a strategy to contain greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming within manageable limits.

The two-week conference is to finalize a plan on managing climate finances, due to scale up to $100 billion annually by 2020.

The International Chamber of Shipping, representing about 80% of the world's merchant marine, joined forces with aid groups Oxfam and WWF International on Tuesday to urge the conference to adopt guidelines for a levy on carbon emissions by ships.

Details of any levy would be worked out by the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency regulating international shipping, the aid groups and the chamber said in a joint statement.

“Shipping has to take responsibility for the emissions and get to grips and drive them down, and they see that the best way to do that is to have a universal charge applied to all ships that is going to generate billions of dollars” to fight climate change, Tim Gore of Oxfam said on the sidelines of the conference.

About 50,000 cargo ships carry 90% of world trade, and most ships are powered by heavily polluting oil known as bunker fuels. Last July the U.N. maritime organization decided that new cargo vessels must meet energy-efficiency standards and cut pollution.

It was the first climate change measure to apply equally to countries regardless of whether they are from the industrialized or developing world.

At the conference, differences came into focus over the Green Climate Fund.

Delegations disagreed about how independent the fund will be, by whom it will be guided and whether the bulk of the money will come from public funds and government aid or from private sources and investments.

A 40-nation committee worked on a draft agreement in several lengthy meetings over the last year, but a consensus at the final meeting last month was blocked by objections from the United States and Saudi Arabia. Now negotiators in Durban must settle the final disputes.

“We are going to have a very thorough and open discussion on that very contentious paper,” said Pedro Pedroso, the delegate from Cuba.

U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing said Monday that the U.S. has “substantive concerns” about the committee's plan, but “we believe these issues can be fixed.”

Washington wants to ensure that private investments are not hamstrung by bureaucracy and that they can bypass any approval process by governments.

The world temperatures report released Tuesday provided a bleak backdrop to negotiators seeking ways to limit pollution blamed for global warming.

2011 has been a year of extreme weather, the WMO reported. Drought in East Africa has left tens of thousands dead; lethal floods submerged large areas of Asia; the United States suffered 14 separate weather catastrophes with damage topping $1 billion each, including severe drought in Texas and the Southwest, heavy floods in the Northeast and the Mississippi Valley, and the most active tornado season ever known.

“The science is solid and proves unequivocally that the world is warming,” said R.D.J. Lengoasa, the WMO's deputy director, and human activity is a significant contributor.

“Climate change is real, and we are already observing its manifestations in weather and climate patterns around the world,” he said.

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Photo: Cyclists power lights on an installation depicting a Baobab tree, part of a renewable-energies display during the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2011 in Durban, South Africa. Credit: Nic Bothma/EPA

Brown cloud might be intensifying storms over Indian Ocean

A longstanding brown cloud of pollution over the Indian Ocean is causing cyclones to intensify in that region, according to a new study published this month in the journal Nature and involving researchers from multiple institutions, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

After the apparent recent increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, including the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, climate watchers everywhere have speculated whether these storms were made stronger by industrial or man-made emissions. This is reportedly the first study to indicate that human activity may, in fact, affect large storms.

Amato Evan, lead author on the study and a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, notes: “The thing that stands out to me, as someone who works in climate and tropical cyclones, is that human activity, things people do, can actually change these massive atmospheric phenomena. To me, this is kind of the first study that can unambiguously tie human activity to something as enormous and powerful as a tropical cyclone.”

The Atmospheric Brown Cloud, previously known as the Asian Brown Cloud, has been observed for decades and began forming prior to World War II. From space, it resembles a dense brown smog and hangs over the northern Indian subcontinent, the northern Bay of Bengal, and the northern Arabian Sea. One of the contributors to the paper, Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, has done some of the most important work on identifying the sources of this pollution, which is made up of particles like black carbon and sulfates and is a product of industrial development but also things as common as wood cookfires from an increasing population.

Cyclones naturally form over the warm waters of the Arabian Sea, but are often limited by wind shear -– the cacophony of short-distance winds moving at different speeds and different directions in the atmosphere. Wind shear can be thought of as turbulence and prevents the cyclones from organizing into powerful storms.

As the brown cloud shades the ocean (called “atmospheric dimming”), however, it affects surface temperatures, which lessen the effects of wind shear. As wind shear effects drop, the storm intensifies. The scientists looked at wind, temperature and satellite data from 1979 to present and correlated the increased pollution to increased storm wind speeds. According to a NOAA press release, five storms in the northern Indian Ocean since 1998 have had winds over 120 mph –- including category 5 Cyclone Gonu in 2007  — and have killed more than 3,500 people and caused over $6.5 billion in damage.

James Kossin, a climatologist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, N.C., and co-author on the study, cautions that it’s early to say smog causes bad storms. “It’s a hypothesis. It’s difficult to say with much certainty, and I think our main hurdle there is just a small sample of storms to look at. The results are very suggestive.”

“It gets into a tricky business when you want to start saying, ‘Here is the cost of that pollution associated with the tropical cyclones.’ That’s probably stretching it a bit far,” adds Evan. “But certainly it’s true in the Atlantic Ocean and it’s true anywhere: a bigger, stronger storm generally causes more damage.”

For Evan, the study has a significant upside: the pollutants that may be intensifying these cyclones are short-term, unlike greenhouse gases. They float into the lower or middle atmosphere and would clear out very quickly if emissions are cut.

“If emissions are reduced, we expect that this kind of trend would reverse on time scales of a few months,” Evans says. “It’s not like greenhouse gases, where we think we’re already in trouble. With these kinds of aerosols, if you just stopped all the emissions right now, the atmosphere would become much cleaner in a matter of weeks. And then the whole climate system, the ocean and the atmosphere, would essentially lose memory of those aerosols. It’s pretty dramatic.”

In an interesting side note, emails related to this study were among those listed in a recent FOIA request by the conservative American Traditions Institute as it investigates climate change science published by the former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann. The ATI has close ties to energy interests that have opposed climate legislation, and the so-called "Climategate" matter has been the subject of previous posts on this blog.

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Photo: A NOAA satellite image showing Hurricane Katrina near the Louisiana-Mississippi border. Credit: EPA/NOAA

CO2 sensitivity possibly less than most extreme projections

A new study in the journal Science suggests that the global climate may be less sensitive to carbon dioxide fluctuations than predicted by the most extreme projections, and maybe slightly less than the best estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Andreas Schmittner, a climate scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., and lead author on the new study, notes that, while man-made global warming is happening and tiny changes in global average temperatures can have huge and deleterious effects, the atmosphere may not be as sensitive to carbon dioxide change as has been reported.

“We used paleoclimate data to look at climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling in the atmosphere, and we are coming up with a somewhat lower value,” says Schmittner.

A 2007 IPCC report addressed the climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide, estimating that air near the surface of the earth would warm 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius with a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial (pre-1850) standards. The mean value of that estimate was 3.0 degrees. Thus, if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled from the amount in 1850, we’d expect a 3 degree C rise in temperature.

Schmittner’s study, however, took a longer view.

“We looked at the paleoclimatic record from the Last Glacial Maximum, which was 19,000-23,000 years before the present. At that time, the planet was much colder than today: There were huge ice sheets over Canada and Northern Europe; the sea levels were much lower, 120 meters lower than today; and C02 levels were also lower, were at 185 ppm. Other greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere were also lower, and there was more dust in the atmosphere,” he said.

Researchers involved with this study compiled large data sets of land and ocean surface temperature reconstructions from that Last Glacial Maximum, when the last ice age was at its peak, and then ran them through the climate models they’ve been using for years, inserting a range of sensitivity numbers from near zero degrees to as high as 8 degrees. Their results showed that temperatures didn’t change as much as would be predicted using the most dire sensitivity numbers. Some independent studies have suggested that carbon dioxide sensitivity might be 10 degrees or higher.

“In fact, a climate sensitivity of more than 6 [degrees] would completely freeze over the planet,” Schmittner pointed out, referring to the ice age. Which, of course, didn’t happen. The ice sheets and glaciation only reached so far toward the equator and then stopped. “So, from that observation alone that it was pretty clear to me that those high climate sensitivities are out of the question, as they are virtually impossible.”

“The best-fitting models had a climate sensitivity of about 2.3-2.4. So that is slightly less than the IPCC best estimate of 3.”

Applying those findings to the future atmosphere, a doubling of carbon dioxide from 1850 levels might mean a rise of 2.4 degrees, rather than 10 or more.

Schmittner points out, however, that there are uncertainties associated with the climate modeling he was using. For instance, the study was unable to take into account changes in clouds on the absorption on sunlight. He expects that the range of climate sensitivities found by the study would expand if cloud changes could be figured in.

Still, Schmittner notes, tiny numbers mean enormous changes. “The temperature reconstructions, they hold a cautionary tale for us,” he says, commenting that even with glaciers covering much of the earth, the ocean temp only went up 2 degrees C.

“If we look at model projections for the future, that suggests temperature changes on the global average of 2-4 degrees are possible. Now, that’s in the similar range to what we had between the Last Glacial Maximum and today. These numbers sound small, but some regions change very dramatically.”

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Photo: A coal-burning power station located next to a lake on the outskirts of Beijing. A new study suggests that the global climate may be slightly less sensitive to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than previously believed, and much less sensitive than the most extreme projections. Credit: David Gray / Reuters

Peter Brown back onboard with Sea Shepherd

This post has been corrected. See note at bottom for details.

Peter Brown, the activist and filmmaker who recently released a warts-and-all portrait of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in his documentary film, "Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist," is rejoining the crew for its annual Antarctic anti-whaling campaign after a two-year hiatus.

"I'm really looking forward to it. Paul's been really great this year, helping with ['Confessions']," Brown said, referring to Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson. "And we've been getting a lot closer. I'm looking forward to sailing with him."

The return is something of a surprise after Brown's acrimonious departure during Sea Shepherd's 2008-2009 winter campaign to stop Japanese whalers in the Antarctic. Those campaigns are the subject of the hit Animal Planet TV show, "Whale Wars," and in Seasons 1 and 2, Brown was made out to be something of a villain -– clashing with crew and camera people, and the subject of much side-interview sniping on the show. He left after a rope on a zodiac boat nearly cut his thumb off.

During two years off, Brown put together "Confessions," compiled from nearly 30 years of footage with the organization. It threatened to raise some hackles with the Sea Shepherd organization as it revealed how campaigns are improvised on the fly, including one incident in which Brown openly admitted he started a riot that resulted in Sea Shepherd officer Lisa DiStefano being dunked after indigenous Makah tribespeople pelted the two of them with rocks. Watson, however, has supported the film, saying his only beef is its name -– he doesn't like the comparison to terrorists -- and showed up for a premiere in Bermuda.

"I don't do this stuff for TV," Brown said. "I'm trying to stop whaling. Paul asked me to come back and I accepted."

Brown is set to rejoin the Sea Shepherd crew Dec. 6 in the harbor city of Fremantle, near Perth in Western Australia, to prepare for this winter’s anti-whaling campaign. He will be first mate on the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin -– named after the Australian star of the nature program "Crocodile Hunter."

Brown is a veteran Sea Shepherd campaigner, having joined the group in 1981. He is also a veteran of TV, having produced and directed the proto-reality show "Real People" beginning in the 1970s. He was also an original producer for "Entertainment Tonight." 

A fifth season of "Whale Wars" has yet to be announced or confirmed, but Brown says it doesn't matter to him if the show's crew comes along.

"I think it's the end of the line for the Japanese whalers this year," he said during a talk outside a Santa Monica coffeehouse. "They really should have given it up last year. They went home early, they didn't get their quota."

"But instead of realizing that maybe whaling should be done forever, they go back and they have an earthquake, they have a tsunami, they have a nuclear accident. And yet, they're going to subsidize a whaling fleet to tune of $200 million to go down there again, plus $27 million more in extra security. And why? They don't want to surrender to Sea Shepherd. It's not that they need whales to feed people."

Brown said his next film project will be a "Roger & Me"-type documentary project in which he visits whaling nations and confronts them directly on their home turf. But, in the meantime, he's bringing that high-energy confrontation back to the boat.

"Paul knew the trouble 'Whale Wars' caused me, so it'll be much better this time. I won't be dancing around, worried about hurting people's feelings. It's on!" he laughed. "Hang on for the ride, you're on the Peter Brown show!"

[For the Record, 2 p.m. Nov. 23, 2011: An earlier version of this post stated incorrectly that Brown would be captain on the Steve Irwin. He will be first mate.]

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Photo: Peter Brown is set to captain the vessel Steve Irwin when the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society returns to Antarctic waters in December to fight the Japanese whaling fleet. Credit: Kelsey Stevens

NOAA greenhouse gas index climbs

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) number today, which measures the direct climate influence of a select set of greenhouse gases, and the news is not good. The numbers continue to climb, further evidence that the greenhouse effect is on the rise.

This comes on top of a staggering report released by the U.S. Department of Energy last week saying that global emissions of carbon dioxide –- a key, and long-lived, greenhouse gas –- had jumped by the biggest amount on record in the year 2010. The figures showed a 6% increase over the year before. That rise was steeper than worst-case scenarios that had been laid out by climate experts only four years before. That news was met with headlines worldwide calling it a “monster” increase and “the biggest ever seen.”

The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index number, by contrast, looks small, but has big impact. The index is a measure of the combined heating effect of the top greenhouse gases during their life spans as the gasses float around in the atmosphere. The number increased from 1.27 in 2009 to 1.29 in 2010, which is essentially a 2% increase. Since the index started in the Kyoto Protocol year of 1990, which the NOAA team chose as a baseline, the increase has been 29%.

“The way you have to look at these things is over time. So we’re up over 20% over where we were in 1990, in our effort to cut greenhouse gases. So we’re not doing very well,” says Jim Butler, director of the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which produces the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index.

Numbers on the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, Butler points out, do not correlate directly to degrees difference in temperature. But when it goes up, warming potential increases.

“The sum of all of those tells you how much we’re increasing the warming potential of the atmosphere,” says Butler. “The analogy I use is the electric blanket. The numbers on the electric blanket don’t correlate to specific temperatures. If you’re really comfortable with it set on 3, and then you gradually turn it up to 6 to get warmer, at first you don’t notice anything. But in a little while you will, and then you’re going to stop turning it up, but you’re going to continue to get hotter.”

NOAA measures the gases in the atmosphere that most directly affect global warming, which it can do, Butler says, “with extreme accuracy.” The top five gases –- carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and two chlorofluorocarbons called CFC11 and CFC12 –- are responsible for more than 95% of the warming effect. About 15 other gases make up the last 5%.

Carbon dioxide is the biggest and baddest, as it is the longest-lived and most abundant. CO2 levels rose to an average of 389 parts per million in 2010, compared with 386 ppm in 2009. Back in the 1880s, before the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was about 280 ppm. Other gases are showing similar increases.

One bit of good news in the report: Concentrations of CFCs 11 and 12 are dropping, albeit very slowly. Remember the ban on ozone-depleting aerosol spray propellants? It evidently works. The 1989 Montreal Protocol banned chlorofluorocarbons and they are gradually being reduced.

Perhaps this is an indication that another global protocol might have similar effects on greenhouse gases. Just an idea.

The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index is just a way to make unsexy science into a concept that people can easily grasp. The heat-trapping potential of a gas is called “radiative forcing” and is measured in watts per square meter. Who the heck knows what that means? Butler hopes the index makes it more clear.

“This looked like a good way of presenting much of what we do within our organization, so people can understand the real effects,” he says.

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Photo: Giant wind turbines at sunset near Albacete, central Spain, part of Spain’s effort to reach Kyoto Protocol targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Paul Hanna / Reuters

Judge restricts release of emails among climate scientists

A county Circuit judge in Virginia has sided with the University of Virginia's effort to restrict the release of personal emails from one of its former faculty members.

The decision late Wednesday would allow the university to alter an agreement it had reached with the American Tradition Institute, which was seeking communications between Michael Mann, a physicist and climate scientist, and other scientists from 1999 to 2005, when Mann was employed by the university.

The American Tradition Institute, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and Colorado, is a nonprofit policy research and education group that has close ties to energy interests that have opposed climate legislation, including the Koch Brothers.

Mann, now a professor at Penn State University, is best known for his contributions to the so-called hockey stick graph that has been at the center of warnings that Earth's temperature rise has been precipitous and historically unprecedented. It has been used as one of thousands of data analyses that have led the vast majority of climate scientists to conclude that man's emission of greenhouse gases is trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Mann was caught up in a controversy in 2009 related to stolen emails that global-warming skeptics alleged showed an attempt to squelch dissenting views and manipulate data to exaggerate the hockey-stick graph. Mann and others have subsequently been cleared by several high-level scientific panels in England and the U.S.

Those investigations have not satisfied conservative groups that cast doubt about the scientific consensus on climate change. They were seeking, through a public-records request, emails among Mann and other scientists. The emails requested by the group are identical to those identified in a subpoena from Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli that was rejected by a different judge last year.

Academics have viewed the subpoena and records request as having a potentially chilling effect on academic freedoms at public institutions such as the University of Virginia. But those seeking the information counter that the public has a right to know what goes on inside the universities its taxes fund.

Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Gaylord Finch also granted Mann standing in the records case.

The judge ordered the university and ATI to choose an independent third party by Dec. 20 to evaluate which correspondence should be disclosed and which should be protected.

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Photo: Michael E. Mann, a Penn State University professor at the center of a dispute over the release of emails sent while he taught at the University of Virginia. Credit: Penn State University

 

Australia moves closer to law establishing carbon tax

The Australian government's goal of implementing a carbon tax passed its toughest test today as the lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly approved a package of bills that institutes a phased-in carbon tax, to be followed by a carbon-trading system.

The 18 bills now go to the Senate, where the law is all but assured of passage in mid-November.

According to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the system will reduce Australia's carbon emissions by 159 million tons by 2020. Australia is the largest per-capita carbon polluter, with an economy deeply dependent on coal.

The first phase of the law will tax carbon at $22.90 a ton beginning in the middle of next year. The surcharge will rise modestly until mid-2015, when the carbon-trading system will take effect. Other bills call for a national emissions caps, exempting farming and other agricultural sectors.

The tax will not extend to the price of gas for consumers, although rail, shipping and large trucking businesses will pay the tax indirectly on fuels such as diesel.

Australia’s biggest carbon emitters -- power companies, mining companies and industrial manufacturers -- immediately attacked the legislation, and the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, vowed a “pledge in blood” to repeal the law should he become prime minister.

The Australian law would go well beyond what the California Air Resources Board is considering. The board voted in August to reaffirm its cap-and-trade plan, which put the nation's first state carbon-trading program back on track.

California's on-again, off-again rules have been years in the making and are meant to complement AB 32, the state's landmark climate-change law that mandates a reduction in carbon pollution to 1990 levels by 2020. The air board adopted a preliminary carbon-trading plan in late 2008 but was sued by environmental justice groups in 2009.

The state plan calls for capping greenhouse gases at more than 600 industrial plants and allowing companies to buy and sell emissions permits. It is modeled on Europe's 6-year-old cap-and-trade system. California is considering whether to work with Canada under the Western Climate Initiative, a collaboration involving the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

California's program would be North America's biggest carbon market, three times larger than a utility-only system in 10 Northeastern states. By 2016, about $10 billion in carbon allowances are expected to be traded through the California market.

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Photo: People walk across the frozen Songhua River near smokestacks at Jiamusi in China's Heilongjiang province in 2005. Credit: Greg Baker / Associated Press