1.          The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet.

    Paul Crutzen, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist who first proposed the term Anthropocene four years ago, said the concept was winning wide acceptance from colleagues in other fields.

    Will Steffen, chief scientist for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, said: "The Anthropocene is a very different era from the relatively stable and nurturing environment in which humans and our societies have evolved. We should expect more instability in the future."

Scientists are building computer models that give a view of the whole "earth system" in the Anthropocene era. These are beginning to show the hot spots or Achilles' heels in Earth's defences against catastrophic change, said John Schellnhuber, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change at the University of East Anglia.

    A dozen hot spots have been identified so far. They are critical regulators of the global environment, which could trigger rapid large-scale changes across the planet if sufficiently stressed.

    The Amazon basin and the Sahara are a linked pair of hotspots; Saharan dust, carried by the wind across the Atlantic Ocean, fertilizes the Amazon. "This process has been going on for thousands of years and is one reason why the Amazon basin teems with life," Professor Schellnhuber said.

    Computer models predict that global warming will cause forests in the Amazon to die back, while the Sahara will become greener, reducing the amount of dust it produces and exacerbating the climatic stress on the Amazon. "This creates the peculiar and disturbing prospect that one day the relationship between the Sahara and Amazon could be reversed," he said.

    Human behaviour is further influencing the ancient relationship between the two regions, as four-wheel-drive vehicles    churn up the Sahara    and increase the amount of dust produced. This might help the Amazon, Professor Schellnhuber said, "but on the other hand global dust is becoming a major problem in terms of climate change."

                                Other hot spots include the North Atlantic ocean circulation, the West Antarctic ice sheet, the Asian monsoon system and the Strait of Gibraltar, the "salinity valve" where Mediterranean and North Atlantic waters mix.

    Another factor causing increasing concern among scientists who model global change is acidification of the oceans as they take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

    "We focus on the carbon in the atmosphere, but we forget that there is 50 times more carbon in the oceans and that the carbon constantly exchanges between the oceans and the atmosphere," said Katherine Richardson, professor of oceanography at Aarhus University in Denmark. A more acidic ocean would not only harm marine biodiversity but also accelerate global warming.

1. Cousteau Comeback
   Melik Kaylan 
   By his death in 1997, Jacques Cousteau was arguably one of the most revered environmentalists on the planet. For years the French oceanographer's books and television documentaries illuminated to millions of people the beauties of, and threats to, the undersea world. Today, however, his name evokes little more than nostalgia from those who grew up watching him, and blank stares from most people too young to have enjoyed his regular TV specials.
   
   Now the Cousteau name is poised for a comeback led by his widow, Francine Cousteau. She and the Virginia-based Cousteau Society have lined up a multistage media blitz that begins May 20 with a photo show at the Time Warner Center, an upcoming book and documentary and even a commemorative watch launched this month by the new corporate sponsor, Swiss watchmaker IWC.
   
   It's all based on a yearlong, back-and-forth through the Red Sea off the Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian and Sudanese coasts with the high-tech Cousteau dive ship Alcyone.
   
   "On the 50th anniversary of Captain Cousteau's first famous adventure, we are retracing his footsteps," says Francine, still a very alluring Frenchwoman in her 50s. That adventure, she says, "launched his first film, where he explored the coral reefs of the Red Sea."
   
   The new documentary, which is almost complete and awaits a distribution deal in the U.S., deploys plenty of old footage from the first film, The Silent World (1954), which he made with acclaimed director Louis Malle. Like all traditional Cousteau projects, the current trip also has a scientific goal: to determine how well the region's marine life has fared. (So far so good, due to the Red Sea's isolation, according to onboard coral expert Dr. Jean Jaubert.)
   
   For decades, as the pioneer of systematic underwater exploration, inventor of the Aqua-Lung and the leading exponent of preserving the sea's ecology, Jacques Cousteau was a global media hero. His documentaries of his trips under the oceans were seen wherever TV existed. In the Muslim world, the rumor still endures that he converted to Islam before he died, although his family has respectfully denied it often. His popularity extended through the Soviet and Chinese communist bloc where it endures through TV reruns. On a recent trip through the Caspian Sea, "crowds of people ran out to wave at the Alcyone wherever it went," says Francine.
   
   There were several reasons why the Cousteau name faded with the captain's death. Other non-Cousteau organizations, like Greenpeace, took up his cause--a sign of his success, in a way. The family split into several factions, each trying to make use of the Cousteau name in different, and confusing, ways.
   
   "It became a battle to save the Cousteau brand, so to speak," says Francine. Meantime, eco-awareness itself became mired in left-right political issues. Only lefty busybodies, it seemed, wanted to save the world. Everyone else wanted to make money. The Cousteau era seemed passé.
   
   At his death, Cousteau tapped his second wife as the person to officially carry on the mission--that is, to head up the Cousteau Society. She had been a stewardess, then an executive at Air France, and a devoted diver throughout her career before marrying Cousteau in 1991. They had two children, and she had worked on 22 Cousteau films by the time he died. Five years of interfamily legal battles later, she has finally emerged in charge.
   
   "Jacques was the explorer and visionary," says Francine. "He was the theorist. I am much more practical. My mission is to put the theories into practice. It's the next stage. My focus is to get things done, but to do that we must revive the Cousteau excitement and remind people of his legacy, especially Americans."
   
   Central to her practical mind-set is Francine's awareness that the U.S. must be won over in any fresh ecological revolution. In other words, she is anxious to avoid being pegged and dismissed as an outdated anti-commerce, anti-profit ideologue. "According to dependable stats," she says, "in less than 30 years 75% of the world will be living part or full time on the coasts. No one can stop the trend in human habitation or use of natural resources. So the challenge is to manage it so nature survives and everyone benefits."
    
   To that end, alongside a media revival and scientific observation, she wants to focus on actively helping to forge conservation plans for coastal areas. "I became a logistics expert at Air France. It's something I can do well."
   
   She cites an invitation by the government of Sudan to help it develop its Red Sea coast responsibly. "What does that involve? Everything. You start by asking international experts to draw up a plan. Then you invite them to sit down with ministers, financiers and local people to work together. It can be done. And nature can survive."
   
   Egypt already offers one working example in the rules imposed on where and how vessels can dock near its coast's fabled vertical Red Sea corals.
   
   The Red Sea is fast becoming a well-trod tourist playground comparable to, say, the Caribbean, which is a strange phenomenon considering that above water there's nothing but scorching desert. Below water, though, nature unfolds dense riches comparable to the rain forest. In a manner unique to the area, the coral reefs have grown as narrow vertical formations over the millennia, as the sea bottom has retracted due to continental shifts. The sea and coral life can go very deep indeed, several hundred meters in places.
   
   This is what Cousteau originally observed, and what the current exploration is reviewing. Unlike its effect on ocean reefs, El Niño left Red Sea marine life relatively intact because the sea is almost enclosed by land masses. That could eventually become a liability, however, because pollution from overdevelopment--if allowed to accrue--would have nowhere to go, Jaubert says.
   
   Like Francine Cousteau, Jaubert is aware that the solution lies as much with encouraging correct commercial development as with regulation. He holds one of the main global patents on natural self-filtration techniques in aquariums and understands that making coral reefs work for a living enhances their chances of survival. He virtually discovered the method for re-creating defunct reefs. Recently, a Red Sea resort in Jordan asked him to grow reefs off its beaches where none existed. Jaubert believes it can be done within five years; indeed, that it can be done anywhere.
   
   Talking to Francine, one is quickly convinced that her heart is in the right place and, even more important, that she has learned to be politically savvy. At a time when many Americans think there's no worse busybody than a French busybody, and are deeply suspicious of the U.N., she senses that the old multistate, globally subsidized projects won't fly anymore. Her realism, the Cousteau mystique and a positive attitude about market forces can make her a real player. The spirit of Jacques Cousteau, it would seem, is about to be reborn.
   

2.  

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

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

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".

1.     
   Bush attacks environment 'scare stories' 

Secret email gives advice on denying climate change 

Antony Barnett in New York
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer 

George W. Bush's campaign workers have hit on an age-old political tactic to deal with the tricky subject of global warming - deny, and deny aggressively.

The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy.

It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and reaching more people'.

The email - sent on 4 February - warns that Democrats will 'hit us hard' on the environment. 'In an effort to help your members fight back, as well as be aggressive on the issue, we have prepared the following set of talking points on where the environment really stands today,' it states.

The memo - headed 'From medi-scare to air-scare' - goes on: 'From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment - Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming "Doomsday!" when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'

Among the memo's assertions are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the US Environment Protection Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least 40 per cent of streams, rivers and lakes are too polluted for drinking, fishing or swimming.

It gives a list of alleged facts taken from contentious sources. For instance, to back its claim that air quality is improving it cites a report from Pacific Research Institute - an organisation that has received $130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998.

The memo also lifts details from the controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. On the Republicans' claims that deforestation is not a problem, it states: 'About a third of the world is still covered with forests, a level not changed much since World War II. The world's demand for paper can be permanently satisfied by the growth of trees in just five per cent of the world's forests.'

The memo's main source for the denial of global warming is Richard Lindzen, a climate-sceptic scientist who has consistently taken money from the fossil fuel industry. His opinion differs substantially from most climate scientists, who say that climate change is happening.

But probably the most influential voice behind the memo is Frank Luntz, a Republican Party strategist. In a leaked 2002 memo, Luntz said: 'The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.'

Luntz has been roundly criticised in Europe. Last month Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, attacked him for being too close to Exxon.

Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace condemned the messages given in the Republican email. He said: 'Bush's spin doctors have been taking their brief from dodgy scientists with an Alice in Wonderland view of the world's environment. They want us to think the air is getting cleaner and that global warming is a myth. This memo shows it is Exxon Mobil driving US policy, when it should be sound science.'

The memo has met some resistance from Republican moderates.

Republican Mike Castle, who heads a group of 69 moderate House members, senators and governors, says the strategy doesn't address the fact that pollution continues to be a health threat. 'If I tried to follow these talking points at a town hall meeting with my constituents, I'd be booed.'

Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords, who left the Republican Party in 2001 to become an independent partly over its anti-green agenda, called the memo 'outlandish' and an attempt to deceive voters.  have a head-in-the-sand approach to it. They're just sloughing off the human health impacts - the premature deaths and asthma attacks caused by power plant pollution,' Jeffords said.

Republican House Conference director Greg Cist, who sent the email, said: 'It's up to our members if they want to use it or not. We're not stuffing it down their throats.'

He said the memo was spurred by concerns that environmental groups were using myths to try to make the Republicans look bad.

'We wanted to show how the environment has been improving,' Cist said. 'We wanted to provide the other side of the story.'

Economists to put price tag on global problems

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

06 March 2004

He has already irked environmentalists by saying that the condition of the world is not as bad as they think it is. Now he wants to pinpoint how world leaders could improve it.

Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistics professor whose book The Skeptical Environmentalistput environmentalists on the defensive with its relatively optimistic outlook, has a new and more ambitious project in the pipeline.

He has persuaded a panel of nine of the world's leading economists to look at 10 of the world's most serious problems and list their solutions according to value for money.

In a meeting in Copenhagen in May they will debate global issues ranging from climate change to disease, from war to hunger. They will be hoping that the United Nations, governments, and billionaire philanthropists such as Bill Gates will be listening.

The conference will be hosted by the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute, of which Professor Lomborg is the director. He is also an associate professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

Professor Lomborg infuriated environmentalists worldwide with his 2001 book, in which he attacked what he said was their central tenet - that the condition of the world isdeteriorating.

He said that concerns such as deforestation and the effects of acid rain were exaggerated, and that others such as hunger and disease were on a downward trend. He did not, however, deny that serious problems existed and in London yesterday he launched the Copenhagen Consensus, his initiative to solve them.

He said that prioritisation was key. "The world faces serious problems such as pollution, hunger and disease," he said. "Which problem should be addressed first? There are 800 million people starving, 2.5 billion people lacking sewerage, and billions affected by climate change. We all wish that there were money enough to solve all problems, but our means are limited. Policymakers prioritise every day, but not always on the best basis. We hope to provide a framework to allow us to make better prioritisations."

His panel of economists, which includes four Nobel prize winners, will examine the ten world problems and produce a list of the best solutions, on a basis of cost-benefit analysis.

Professor Lomborg said: "Some problems make good television but are not so frightening in reality, such as pesticide residues, or birds caught in oil slicks.

"We need to get our priorities right. A really important problem is indoor air pollution in the developing world, which the World Health Organisation thinks causes two million deaths a year."

THE LOMBORG CHALLENGES

CLIMATE CHANGE: Burning fossil fuels is pushing up temperatures with potentially disastrous consequences

COMMUNICABLE DISEASES: New diseases such as Aids and Sars rank alongside revived ones such as cholera

CONFLICTS: The number and nature of wars around the world have escalated in the past decade

EDUCATION: Learning is one of the best ways out of poverty but 862 million adults were illiterate in 2000

FINANCIAL INSTABILITY: Insufficient economic data and hidden weaknesses in financial systems pose a challenge

CORRUPTION: The World Bank pinpoints this as the largest single hindrance to economic and social development

HUNGER: The UN says 800 million people starve every day

MIGRATION: An estimated 125 million people are migrants

SANITATION: More than one billion people have no clean drinking water and 2.4 billion lack sanitation

TRADE BARRIERS: Trade barriers and subsidies can considerably damage local and international markets