WEATHER-RELATED DISASTERS DOMINATE

World Watch - In 2007, there were 874 weather-related disas­ters worldwide, a 13 percent increase over 2006 and the highest number since the systematic recording of natural perils began in 1974. Weather-related disasters around the world have been on the rise for decades: on average, 300 events were recorded every year in the 1980s, 480 events in the 1990s, and 620 events in the last 10 years.

In 2007, weather-related disasters accounted for 91 percent of all natural disasters, a classification that also includes earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and dry mass movements. About 81 percent of economic losses from natural catastrophes and 97 percent of insured losses resulted from weather-related disasters.

The United States suffered particularly from forest fires and heat waves in 2007. In California, hundreds of destructive wildland fires occurred. Economic losses rose to $2.7 billion.

PALIN BASED VIEWS ON DANGERS TO POLAR BEARS ON OIL INDUSTRY FUNDED STUDY

Guardian, UK - [Palin's] paper, entitled Polar Bears of Western Hudson Bay and Climate Change, has been criticized for relying on old research and ignoring evidence that Arctic sea-ice is melting at a quickening pace. Walt Meier, a world authority on sea ice, based at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said: "The paper doesn't measure up scientifically."

One co-author of the paper, Willie Soon, completed the study with funding from ExxonMobil - which has oil operations in Alaska's North Slope - as well as from the American Petroleum Institute. Soon was a former senior scientist with the George C Marshall Institute, which acts as an incubator for climate-change skepticism. The institute has received $715,000 in funding from ExxonMobil since 1998. . .

Another co-author of the document was Sallie Baliunas. In 2003 she and Soon were criticized when it was revealed that a joint paper had been partially funded by the American Petroleum Institute. Thirteen scientists whom they cited issued a rebuttal and several editors of the journal Climate Research resigned because of the "flawed peer review". A third co-author of the polar bear study, David Legates, a professor at Delaware University, is also associated with the Marshall Institute."

ECO CLIPS

Architecture 2030 - According to the US Energy Information Administration, oil production from drilling offshore in the outer continental shelf wouldn't begin until around the year 2017. Once begun, it wouldn't reach peak production until about 2030 when it would produce only 200,000 barrels of oil per day. This would supply a meager 1.2% of total US annual oil consumption (just 0.6% of total US energy consumption). And, the offshore oil would be sold back to the US at the international rate, which today is $106 a barrel. So, the oil produced by offshore drilling would not only be a "drop in the bucket", it would be expensive, which translates to "no relief at the pump".

USA Today - The state of Washington is telling its local governments they must prohibit home car washing unless residents divert the wash water away from storm drains, where they say it causes water pollution. "I understand this is something people have done for a long time," says Bill Moore, water quality specialist with the Washington state Department of Ecology, which is requiring the ban. "It's not something we should be doing any longer." He says the soapy runoff is toxic to salmon and other fish and that small metal particles that wash off cars, such as brake dust, is harmful, too. Unlike public sanitary sewer systems that clean wastes from water, storm drain systems in most communities empty straight into streams and eventually rivers and oceans. . . Washington state environmental officials insist they aren't banning home car washing - just the runoff into storm drains, Moore and Schmanke say. They say residents will still be able to wash cars on lawns or gravel driveways where water will soak in the ground. Residents can wash on pavement if they install barriers to prevent wash water from going into storm sewers.

PR Watch - In an opinion column, former Greenpeace activist turned PR consultant Patrick Moore waxes lyrical about a proposal by Luminant to build two new reactors at its Comanche Peak nuclear power station in Texas. Luminant's new reactors, he wrote, would produce "electricity from virtually carbon-free nuclear power." Moore's brief biographical note states only that he is "co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a national grass-roots coalition that promotes nuclear power." What neither Moore nor the Dallas Morning News discloses to readers of the column is that he is a consultant for the Nuclear Energy Institute , which funds the "coalition." Luminant is a member of the NEI.

Architecture 2030 - 12,954 Nuclear Power Plants - That's how many nuclear plants the world would need to build to replace its current fossil-fuel-based energy. Even if it was physically possible to build this many plants within the seven-year timeline set by scientists to avoid dangerous climate change (it takes 8 to 12 years to get a nuclear plant on-line), the cost would be astronomical. At $6 billion per plant (a conservative figure), 12,954 plants would cost $77.72 trillion - more than the total Gross World Product of $65.95 trillion.

POLAR BEARS RESORT TO CANNIBALISM

Tree Hugger - "[Polar bears] are dependent on the Arctic sea ice for all of their essential behaviors, and as the ice melts and global warming transforms the Arctic, polar bears are starving, drowning, even resorting to cannibalism because they don't have access to their usual food sources," said Kassie Siegel, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Scientists have noticed increasing reports of starving Arctic polar bears attacking and feeding on one another in recent years. In one documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female's den and killed her.

Walt Meier, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado: "Seven million square kilometers roughly corresponds to an area of the lower 48 United States. So back in the early 1980s, the lower 48 states would be covered in sea ice in the summer. Now we've essentially lost sea ice east of the Mississippi River and even beyond. So that's a significant amount of area."

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS CAVE ON OFFSHORE DRILLING

Washington Post - Congressional Democrats bowed to political pressure and agreed to let the ban on offshore oil drilling expire, a decision that would allow exploration just three miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines unless the next president reinstates an executive branch order that prohibits drilling. Democrats said they gave in to White House demands rather than risk a showdown over the "continuing resolution" Congress must pass to fund the federal government through March. A new drilling moratorium would have been included in that wide-ranging measure. Provisions seeking money for home heating assistance for the poor and a loan program for the auto industry remain in the . . .

The most ardent drilling opponents, who contend that exploration of the outer continental shelf puts oceans at risk without producing short-term relief from gasoline prices, said there is still time for the next president and future Congresses to work out a new compromise before oil rigs are erected within sight of the nation's coasts.

EXPERTS: MOVING TOO SLOW TO PREVENT CLIMATE CATASTROPHE

Guardian, UK - Political inaction on global warming has become so dire that nations must now consider extreme technical solutions - such as blocking out the sun - to address catastrophic temperature rises, scientists from around the world warn today.

The experts say a reluctance "at virtually all levels" to address soaring greenhouse gas emissions means carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are on track to pass 650 parts-per-million, which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They call for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the Earth, such as dumping massive quantities of iron into oceans to boost plankton growth, and seeding artificial clouds over oceans to reflect sunlight back into space.

Writing the introduction to a special collection of scientific papers on the subject, published today by the Royal Society, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge say: "While such geoscale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing."

They add: "There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."

Professor Launder, a mechanical engineer, told the Guardian: "The carbon numbers just don't add up and we need to be looking at other options, namely geo-engineering, to give us time to let the world come to its senses." He said it was important to research and develop the technologies so that they could be deployed if necessary. "At the moment it's almost like talking about how we could stop world war two with an atomic bomb, but we haven't done the research to develop nuclear fission.". . .

In a strongly worded paper with colleague Kevin Anderson in today's special edition of the society's Philosophical Transactions journal, Bows says politicians have significantly underestimated the scale of the climate challenge. They say this year's G8 pledge to cut global emissions 50% by 2050, in an effort to limit global warming to 2C, has no scientific basis and could lead to "dangerously misguided" policies. . .

Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact. According to the government's Stern review on the economics of climate change in 2006, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year, there would be a 30-50% reduction in water availability in southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15-35% in Africa and 20-50% of animal and plant species would face extinction.

BUOYING UP THE POWER GRID

Tree Hugger - Earlier in the summer the world's first commercial-scale tidal turbine began feeding power to the grid. New York City's Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy project is up and running, after a few set-backs. Last week the US Department of Energy announced that it will be spending $7 million to further clean tech water power research.

Now another wave power technology, Ocean Power Technologies' PB 40 Power Buoy, has been deployed in what will be a 1.39 MW wave power project off the coast of Spain. Yeah, that's really not that much power in the grand scheme of things, but the technology is pretty interesting:

While most tidal power uses a underwater mounted turbine of some sort, the Power Buoy relies instead on the rising and falling of the waves to generate power. Power is transmitted to the shore via underwater cable. . .

OPT touts an additional benefit of the PB 40 Power Buoy: Because of its size (7 meters in diameter and 20 meters tall, most of which is below the water) it is visually unobtrusive, which is a good thing considering that power station using the technology are designed to be located 1-3 miles offshore.

More on the Spanish Project OPT's Power Buoy project in Spain is being done in partnership with renewables giant Iberdrola and is located 4.8 kilometers off the coast of Santoña. When completed it will consists of 10 buoys, generating 1.39 MW of power, enough the company says to power 2500 homes.

SCIENTISTS FIND METHANE TIME BOMB IN ARCTIC

Steve Connor, Independent, UK - The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists. The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane - sometimes at up to 100 times background levels - over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BOYS GONE?

Tree Hugger - Martin Mittelstaedt of the Globe and Mail writes about how "Researchers tracking childhood behavioural disorders, sperm counts, testicular cancer and even the shrinking size of male gonads are convinced that something is amiss. The University of Pittsburgh's Devra Davis, in a study issued last year, found that the U.S. and Japan combined had a staggering tally of 262,000 "missing boys" from 1970 to about 2000 because of a decline in the sex ratio at birth. Although it could be a statistical anomaly, she says the figure is "very worrisome." Some think it might be due to endocrine disruptors in the environment. He lists "science's top five worries over the fate of the human male."

1. Lost boys: Studies on births from the U.S., Japan, and Canada have found a drop in the percentage of boys born compared with girls. The reason isn't known.

2. Declining harvest: Men in farm country can be half as prolific when it comes to making sperm as their city counterparts, raising the possibility that pesticides undermine male fertility.

3. Downsizing: It's disputed by chemical companies, but some researchers say they have found an everyday plastic compound - phthalates - that feminizes baby boys, causing penises and other reproductive organs to be smaller.

4. Hormones not so raging: If you're a middle-aged man, you're likely to be less virile than your father because you make less testosterone. In recent decades, the decline has averaged about 1 per cent a year. If it continues over another generation or two, the consequences could be dire.

5. Equipment failure: Rates of testicular cancer, hypospadias and other genital abnormalities have soared over recent decades, rising by more than 50 per cent each.

Mittelstaedt then lists the four chemicals that are causing the biggest concern: Bisphenol A, Phthalates, Polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDE). Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)